


A Witch's Movie Night

by fluffyharpy



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-03-31 20:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3991027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffyharpy/pseuds/fluffyharpy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bored out of their minds one night, Lambdadelta and Bernkastel partake in Fragments culled from the farthest reaches of the sea of information.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Detective Falls in Love Part 1

“Hey, Bern, I'm super double happy that you asked me over tonight. But what the heck are we going to do?” Lambdadelta asked while hanging over the arm of her oversized chair.

“I will be getting to that, Lambda. If you would just sit and shut up for once in your life I could get to the night's entertainment.” Bern said.

“Hmph,” Lambda pouted. “Whatever you say, Bern.”

Outside the normal flow of time and the sea of endless information, the haunt of a Witch floats endlessly, unchanging and eternal. It was the resting place of the Witch of Miracles, she who travels the fragments out of boredom and plays horrible games merely to sate her own twisted hunger. But today was different, for there were no games to be played and no fragments to be found.

Rather, today was a day of rest, and one in which the tiny, blue-haired fairy of a witch sat properly in a chair which looked almost comically large compared to her overall size. In her hand she held a small object that shone like a brilliant crystal of the highest purity, and within it lay the memories of a world far removed from the Golden Witch's catbox. It was also, as it so happened, the “entertainment” the blue-haired witch had just mentioned.

“This is a window in a particular Fragment I found sometime ago floating in the eternal sea of information. It is a world of truth once remove from that of our former Gamemaster, and one in which the tragedy of nineteen years ago went quite differently. Normally I would never bother with such a useless story, but it just so happens that a certain foolish piece of mine takes center stage and her follies are quite amusing at times.” Bern laughed haughtily. “So I thought that a night spent laughing at her vain attempts at happiness would make for an excellent evening.”

The Witch of Certainty could only cock her head to the side in a fit of pure confusion. There were indeed times, and possibly even most times, when Bernkastle was obtuse or vague about the true nature of a situation. But this was odd even for her. “You mean, Erika? Because I thought she was just some corpse you dredged up from the bottom of the ocean and stuck into Beato's game because you were bored.”

“Well yes, but in this particular fragment her fate is far remove from merely being fish food. This is simply because in a sea of infinite possibility anything is possible, and thus nothing is a miracle. I would explain it with a complicated metaphor, but I don't think you would understand. So let me dumb it down for you; in that child's game Erika existed only as a corpse. But within this particular Fragment, however, she is very much alive, and that child very much dead, their head splattered against some rocks or something gruesome like that.” There was no sympathy for the dead in the voice of the Witch of Miracles, only a sense of detached amusement at their plight.

“So in other words, we're having a movie date night?!” Lambda's eyes lit up like stars as her voice reached higher and louder then it ever had in the past. “Afterward can we go back to your room and XXX and XXX, then XXX in your XXXX?!”

Bern merely reached over from her own chair and punched her fellow witch squarely in the face. “No. There will be nothing of the sort, unless of course you desire for several hot coals to placed in your mouth and then to be bound with chains for hours on end.” This was, as defined by Bern herself, foreplay.

Something about that actually sounded mildly appealing to the Witch of Certainty, but then again, many odd things did as well. “Maybe later, Bern.” Lambda said while rubbing her wounded now intensely red forehead. “But for now why don't we watch this movie of yours?”

“Very well then, I now raise the curtain on another truth. Perhaps the plight of my stupidest of pieces will be enough to amuse us for short while.”

***  
Nineteen years ago a tragedy played itself out upon the stage of Rokkenjima that would change forever the destiny of everyone who bore the accursed name of the Ushriomiya family. But in one strange Fragment where fates cross and the stars plot for all involved a different course, that tragic day ended not with a fledgling soul being spirited away to relative safety, but rather left to die beside the same jagged rocks that had claimed the life of another unfortunate soul many years before.

It was many years later that another youth would find herself entangled in the steel-woven web of that accursed family. It was a stormy night over a decade before the end that a ship crashed off the course of Rokkenjima, all aboard the craft died, save for one small girl who by some chance, as we all know there is no such thing as miracles, managed to drift through tide and current only to wash up on the sandy beaches of Rokkenjima one sunny afternoon.

Her name was Erika Furudo, a small, blue-haired girl who looked far younger then her numerical age would suggest. It was the servants of the island that took pity upon her unfortunate luck and took the young girl under their collective wing, giving her shelter in the family orphanage and training in the art of domestic service as a means of proving her worth. Though she was often babied by all involved, for she was far to young to withstand the barbs and arrows of her fellow maids, Erika quickly developed into a young lady of great intellect and talent, much to the annoyance of those around here. For with her smarts and talent, came gloating, and as large the former of these things was, her ego was infinitely larger.

And so came isolation, as no one wants to play with a braggart after all. So Erika found herself alone in the world, disconnected from all but the servants who had so kindly given her a life to live and with no one her own age to truly connect to. She locked herself in her room with mountain upon mountains of old tomes scrounged both from the personal library of the family head, and provided to her by a certain matron with a love of all things mackerel. She devoured these books like a shark may a school of fish, taking in their contents and then storing it away to for later. But even amongst all she had learned in her private study, nothing entranced the blue-haired youth more then a good mystery.

An outlet for her immense intelligence, Erika over time found it quite easy to solve any case lay before her. Through the use of the Decalogue and Commandments of the greats of the past, she could destroy a mystery like no other. Perhaps it wasn't the mystery itself that drove her so, but the act of destruction, of taking something a person had wrote and shredding apart layer after layer until only the truth remained. With each fictional case she had managed to solve in her own head far before the reveal of whodunnit, a smile crept long and wide upon the young maid's face, and with it grew a single thought in her head as well. 

“With just this level of reasoning, I could even become a detective!” Erika declared to herself one late night after reaching the end of a particularly difficult mystery. 

And she wasn't wrong.

***  
The ocean beside Rokkenjima was quiet that day, as rolling waves crashed gently against the shore and the sound of seagulls echoed through the air. It was on just such a day that Erika sat reading to herself at just the point where the sea water wouldn't muss her elegant hand-me down dress. In her hand was a thick book containing the mysteries of the great mystery writer Agatha Christie. Though she had read the well worn tome many times over, the cases found within its covers still tantalized Erika's mind like no other. She often dreamed of taking up the same mantle of the protagonists of such stories, and solving murders and other crimes with her wits and intellect alone.

Yet no crime would ever happen on this quiet little island it seemed, for everyone here was so painfully boring, and complete incapable of coming up with a scheme beyond the simple pranks that the rest of the help staff often blamed on a witch or some other supernatural tripe. Truly no one in the family seemed to truly understand the would-be detective, for she was a world removed from their constant squabbling over money, inheritance, and all of the other things that came with being from a wealthy family.

Erika sighed, but found her missive drowned out by the crying of black and white birds overhead. “Shoo!” she called to them, waving her book in the air as she did. “Can't you see that I'm trying to read in peace?” 

But it was not only the one who had heard her, as a shadow far larger then any such an avian creature could cast loomed over her, and an odd bit of laughter filled the air. “Ihihihihi, that was a nice try, but I don't think they're going to listen.” 

Erika turned around ready to lash out against any person who dared mock her, but as prepared as she was to unleash the wrath of heaven upon her would-be interrupter, her mood of anger quickly became one of confusion. As behind her stood a well-dressed young man, perhaps no more then two years older then herself, with blazing red hair and who seemed to be surrounded by aura of complete ease. His name was Battler, and he was the second oldest of the four cousins of the Ushiromiya family.

For a moment Erika, who had spent her childhood dealing exclusively with people older then herself, could not speak. As she simply had no idea what to say. Should she yell and shoo this boy like she had the seagulls? No, that would just be rude. But still, what could she say? What did kids her age even talk about? She did not know the answer to either of these question, and so she sat quietly for one long moment, her brain racing to find something to say.

“Cat got your tongue?” Battler laughed again.

“Of course not!” Erika yelled. “I was just trying to read for awhile, and these stupid birds insisted on interrupting me with their endless bleating.”

His eyes set to wander to places young boys eyes are want to do, Battler notice that brown-covered book tucked gently under Erika's left arm. Carefully he eyed the title, and as he did a smile came across his face. “Well that sure sucks,, but hey, I see you've got good taste in books at least. That has to count for something.”  
Erika pulled back and growled like an angry and exceptionally tiny dog. “Don't tease me.” she muttered none to loudly with a sneer. “I've had enough of that in my life already.”

Battler might not have called himself a detective, as Erika sometimes did in private, but in that moment he had instantly become witness to what may be perhaps the most difficult of all mysteries: why a woman was angry. To young to know the answer to such a question, or even perhaps to care, he continued on as he usually did with anyone else, regardless of age or gender. “No, no. I'm just surprised to see another kid reading a mystery novel like that. There isn't many kids our age into that kind of stuff.”

In that moment, a strange feeling washed over Erika's body. “What was this feeling?” She wondered to herself. A youth spent in isolation had bred in her a certain sense of the world. As far as she was concerned, things went like this; at the pinnacle of things was herself, naturally. She was far more intelligent then any of the fools in the Ushiromiya family, or any of the damned maids who had tormented and teased her so much over the years. Then their were the other servants, Kumasawa and Genji, they were nice enough, she supposed. But far to old for her to truly call friends. Perhaps a mother and father figure, but certainly not friends. Just looking at Battler, she could not place where he fit in the grand scheme of things. He was not old, nor did it seem like he would dump upon her a rain of insults and dirty tricks, and this bothered her to no end.

“So what? I've been reading this sort of thing for years now.” She lifted the heavy book in her left hand and showed it off as if it were a trophy of some kind. 

“I don't know, its just sort of cool.” Battler smiled, bringing a blush to Erika's face and causing her to drop her book in the process. “So you've read Christie, right?”

“Of course, it would take an idiot to not see that I'm holding one of her works right now!” 

Erika quickly grabbed for her book and shook her head, shooing from her face the redness that indicated she felt anything at the current moment besides a sort of dejected annoyance. 

“Ihehehe, I guess your right. So how about Van Dine?”

“Of course. I know his rules by heart.” Erika laughed.

“And Knox?”

“When I was eight years old, I've even memorized every word of the Decalogue and can recite it from memory.”

“Impressive! So how about Doyle?” 

“Who hasn't? Holmes is an old friend of mine.” Erika gloated. 

What was a mere icebreaker for the young boy was in Erika's mind, an undeclared battle to show who was more dedicated to the mystery genre. For years, when she'd had no friends to speak of and few outlets for her creative impulses, the world of mystery had become a private sanctuary of sorts and if this boy intended to trod upon her sacred ground, he would have to be at least as knowledge as she was, but not more so. As Erika always had to stand at the peak of creation, it was just the natural order of things as far as she was concerned.

“Then you've read them all as well?” Erika said.

“A little of each, but it seems like you've got me beat by a mile.” To Erika, that sounded like an admission of defeat and thus the air of aggression she had projected suddenly dissipated and its place a proper hierarchy established. “So whats your name, I don't think I've ever seen you around here before?”

“Of course you haven't. As far as these people are concerned, I'm just another servant. So none of them bother to talk to me or even acknowledge that I exist.” she sighed. “But I'm Erika Furudo.”

“Erika it is then, ihihi.” Battler said as if recording her name firmly in his memories. “I'm Battler, Battler Ushiromiya. But I think you could have guessed that.”

“Of course, my powers of deduction are second to none. Based on the fact that you look to be about my age, you must be the child of one of the adults here, as no one beside a member of the Ushiromiya family or a servant is ever on this island. So unless one of the older servants was pregnant a decade ago, then you must be a child of the Ushiromiya family!” Erika pointed triumphantly at Battler, reveling in a victory that mattered only in the depths of her mind. 

Battler put together his hands and clapped. “That was very impressive! I'd love to see you do that again sometime. So why don't we hang out tomorrow? “

“Eh?” Erika retorted. “You want to spend time with me? Is something wrong with your head?”

“Might be, but I'm serious. You seem fun, so why not hang out for awhile?”

Again a strange feeling swept over Erika's body, and she wished it wouldn't. “Then we will meet in my room after lunch tomorrow. You should bring your best, because I won't let you escape without a good fight!”

Battler nodded, blissfully unaware of the fate that he had just consigned himself to. “Its a date then. I've got to get going or my mom and dad will worry, but I'll definitely see you tomorrow!”

Before she could say anything edgewise, the red-haired youth had already dashed away and left her only with a brief wave and her own thoughts for company. 

Once more, Erika turned a deep shade of red. Though she didn't know why.

 

***  
The next day the pair met in Erika's sparsely decorated room just after the crack of noon. A dwelling fit for a servant, and furnished in the same, the lonely space was filled only with a single bed, a writing desk, and dresser that contained all of the clothing that had been handed down to Erika from above as if she was a charity case. Such was how the majority of the Ushiromiya family treated the budding detective, as far as they were concerned, she was not a member of their family, but rather a poor girl that they had given a second chance in a modern exhibition of the stately concept of Nobeliss Oblige. 

True enough, the cousins had been nice enough to her, and even played with her on occasion. But they had nothing in common with her. George for example , the eldest of the four, always seemed to be to caught up with some strangely idealistic view of the world to have a proper conversation with. While Maria, the youngest of the bunch, she was just a child, and one obsessed with the supernatural at that and there was no room for anything like that in the life of a detective. Jessica was perhaps the nicest of the lot, but her empty head was far to often filled with thoughts of loneliness and despair to be much of a friend. 

But then there was Battler, he was different. Though they had only met a day before, the youth had already challenged her in ways that no one else could. His knowledge of mysteries was just comprehensive enough to match Erika's own, and that angered her to no end. But it had also showed to her that she was not alone in her love, there was others with whom she could share all of the tricks and traps of the genre swimming about in her head with, and one of them had been under her nose the entire time. That day, Erika had made her first true friend...or perhaps as it was more clear to say, she had found herself a rival.

The sun filtered through the room's single upward facing window in such a way that only a single beam of light illuminated the dusty living space, making it appear as if it was the dead of night in the further reaches of the room. On bed in the corner, Battler and Erika sat beside one another. While Erika searched for something to break the tension in the air, she found only a haughty speech buried in the depths of her mind. 

“Welcome to my room, Battler.” She said with grand pose. “Are you ready to be ground into the dirt beneath my heel in a game of wits?”

“I'd much rather hear about more about you, but that sounds good to!” he said in jest.

It was an opening gambit that Erika had not planned for, and with no defense against them she found herself recoiling in embarrassment across the bed where she soon covered herself with a lace-lined pillow. “Fiiiinnneeee,” she muttered. “but don't think that this means you will be allowed to leave before we have our dual!”

Battler smiled. “Well yeah, I did promise didn't I? And I always keep my promises, but before we tell me about yourself?” 

“I am Erika Furodo, a servant of the Ushiromiya family that washed up on the beach not far from the manor several years ago. I was made a maid by Miss Natsuhi in exchange for this room, food, and clothing to wear. The other maids have always treated me like trash, and the main family hasn't been much better. All of them think they are so great just because they have money, but I'm smarter then all of them! If I had that much money, or even a thousandth of it, I'd leave this island forever and show the world what I'm capable of.” Erika spoke with a voice filled with rage and ambition and tossed her pillow across the room in frustration.

She knew that she was the best, the smartest, and the most capable person on the island, but why had she been so misfortune as to be bound to this awful family and denied the chance at greater glory out in the real world? That was a mystery even she could not solve.

“Ouch, that’s pretty harsh. But I don't think my family is really that bad, I mean dad and Kyrie have always been pretty cool.”  
“Perhaps to you, but as far as they're concerned I'm just another useless servant they can trample on whenever it is convenient. The fact that you've been nice to me for these past two days proves nothing.”

“So I guess that means we're friends now?” Battler said earnestly. 

“I don't need friends.” Erika stated bluntly. “But you are more then welcome to tag along with me sometimes.”

“I think I’ll do just that then, ihihihihi.” Battler laughed, and Erika's defenses went to scrap.

It was then that that Erika's life changed forever, for as she lost herself in the laughter and jovial expression of her very first friend, she felt in her chest a tight pull that not even her great intellect and deductive skills could explain. 

“You ok Erika?” Battler asked.

“Of course I am, stupid, I must have eaten something bad at lunch. That's all.” she said while clutching at her chest. 

As Erika regained her composure, the two began to talk of all things mystery.

From Christie to Van Dine and beyond, all of the greats of the past passed between the two in a sort of dialogue that drew upon over fifty years of genre tradition and convention. And with each passing volley, Erika grew more and more excited, her small cheeks turning beat red and her voice rising into an almost manic mood that rang of excitement of the sort she had never experienced before. For years she had only explored the world of mystery by herself int his very room, but now? She finally had someone to share that love with, someone that would respond to her every theory and inquiry with one of his own, and even challenged her on occasion. Though she did hate being wrong, Erika did love a good game, and no one in all the world had managed to provide her with just that then Battler. 

By the end of the day, Erika had found herself exhausted and barely able to speak, so much had she exerted herself expositing about her favorite topic. “I'll admit, Battler” she huffed. “Though your nowhere near my level, you're really good at this.” 

“Why thank you, that's good to hear from such a pretty girl.” he said happily.

Erika did not dignify such a statement with a response, but instead moved onto something else entirely. “When can I see you again? You still owe me a proper game!”

Battler thought, long and hard. To a child time was a nebulous and seemingly infinite thing divided into school year, summer, and winter holidays, so it was often hard to conceptualize just how dates fit together in the grand scheme of thing. But eventually he came up with something, a simple solution that should have been obvious at first glance. “I guess it will be at next year's conference.”

“But that is forever from now!” she yelled.

“I know, but just think of it as time to read some more and practice. Because I'm going to win regardless of what game you throw at me!” Battle said slyly.

“You wish, there is no one who can counter my perfect logic. Not even you.” Erika gloated.

“I guess we'll see about that next year.” Battler said with a smile.

“Yes we will,” Erika said excitedly, for she had finally made a friend.

 

***

For the next two years the two met at the same time on the same day and did just what they had that first day. For each mystery they had read in their long time apart, often as dictated by letters what should be read in the meantime, theories were discussed, dissected and made a game of. Whomever could solve a tale first would be the winner, and given bragging rights for another year, when again they would repeat the cycle anew and the game would begin again. And for each of the years between the present and then, Erika had won each and every game, leaving Battler to bask in the glow of a girl more confident in her skills and intelligence then any one person most likely should be.

But to him, it was still fun, even if he lost time and time again. Erika's spirit, indeed her sheer drive to solve each and every fictional murder as if the fate of real people depended on her was endearing. While the rest of his cousins were fun enough to be around, and he enjoyed every moment spent with them on the isolated island off the Japanese coast, it was being with Erika for hours on end that he always looked forward to most as he and the rest of his family sped towards Rokkenjima by boat. 

This year was a special one to, as for the first time he had been allowed to construct the grand game that had come to be the center piece of each of their get-togethers. It had taken two years to convince Erika that he had been worthy of such an honor, and taken far more begging then he'd like to admit. But this would be his year, for he had written something that would finally stump his partner in-crime once and for all. 

“Yo, Erika!” Battler said as he got off the boat that had taken his extended family to Rokkenjima.

As she had every year for the last three years, Erika stood at the islands small dock and had waited diligently for nearly forty-five minutes for her favorite member of the Ushiromiya family to finally appear. Though she never admit it aloud, her heart was beating far more quickly then it typically did as she finally saw Battler's smiling face come into full view.

“It's taken you long enough to get here,” Erika replied. “would you like for me to crush you now or later?”

The blue-haired girl smirked, in her mind there was no chance in this or any other universe that Battler could best her in a game of wits. And for many years now, she had been right. But there was always a chance with these sort of things. A chance that things might go horribly wrong, or that you'd missed something that was right in front of your face the entire time. In Erika's case, the former had mixed with the latter.

“You'll have to wait. I have to go put my stuff away before dad yells at me again.“ Battler sighed. “I'll meet you at the usual time and place, though. So get ready, I've put together a real good one for you this year. I bet it'll even stump a great detective like you.”

Erika brushed aside her long hair in a dismissive manner. “I can't see that happening, but your welcome to try.” she said haughtily. “There is no one on this island with a greater power of logic then myself, and history is on my side as well as, if I recall correctly, you've never beaten me before!” 

Erika beamed as bright as the morning sun as it gradually made its way overhead, the past is always a predictor of the future and in this case dictated that Battler's chance of victory rested just above zero. 

“You're right, ihihihi.” he laughed. “But this one is really good. “

“If you say so.” Erika slyly said. “Till then I will be in my room, whenever you're ready to lose, come by and we'll begin.”

Battler nodded, for the rest of morning he would be stuck unpacking his things, talking with the adults about his grades, friends, and all those sorts of things. But the afternoon, that belonged to him and Erika alone.

***  
Erika awaited her mystery loving partner with the sort of giddy excitement that she would never in a million years show to outsiders. In her head over the past year she had studied endlessly the texts of various authors in hopes of picking up even the smallest of advantages over Battler. She was an aggressive girl, one who hated to lose and would not stand her perfectly planned logic and deductions undermined by anyone. To lose meant showing her inferiority to another, as well as that she was not truly the best there was. It was a frustrating though that, if only for a minute, there might be someone more well verse in the lore of mystery then her. But thus far, that grim future had not come to pass, as she had readily buried Battler in every duel and contest they had engaged in over the past three years.

And she liked it that way. Even when he lost, Battler would always put on a happy face and admit defeat with a sort of jovial grace. So they had both gotten what they wanted, Battler had found a playmate, and Erika someone willing to put up with her endless bragging and cutthroat attitude towards anything that could be made into a competition. It was a match made in heaven, or hell, depending on which side of the equation you were looking at.

Gleefully Erika swung her legs back and forth from atop her old wood-frame bed, and hummed to herself a song she had heard Jessica listening to not long before. Her happiness, she'd assumed, had come from after a long year apart, being able to hear, and then destroy, the mystery that Battler had created for her. But there was more to it then that, as the another mystery, that of the knot in her stomach that formed from time to time in situations like these, yet went unsolved.

“Maybe I should eat less of Kumasawa's cooking.” Erika thought to herself, as if that could explain her recent internal troubles. “But where is Battler? It is already five minutes past noon and he is not here!” Erika roared.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Battler poked his head through the door and gave Erika a wicked smile of his own. He was up to something, and she knew it. “Are you ready?”

“I always am.” Erika smiled. 

Battler took a seat across from Erika in a wooden chair meant for the bedroom's writing desk. He crossed his legs and adapted the mannerisms of a story teller, posturing himself with his back straight and a confident look on his face that seemed to say “I know exactly what I'm talking about.”

“Ok, the rules for this one are the same as our usual games. I'll throw a simple mystery out there, and you have to solve it. You can use any logic or tools you want to, but just remember, the answer isn't really that complicated. So don't over think things to much.”

“Like I would ever do something like that.” Erika rolled her eyes as she spoke. “But just get on with it already!”

And so they're duel began. Despite her calm demeanor, Erika's eyes burned with a fire that could have easily consume any less opponent, but had little chance to phase her partner of three years now. Battler only smirked at the look of determination on Erika's face, she would try so hard to solve this most simple of mysteries, and use every tool at her disposal to do so. But that, he thought, would be her undoing.

“So I've killed you in a closed room. All of the windows, doors, and any other means of escape are completely sealed. The walls and ceiling are made up material that cannot be broken down and otherwise destroyed. There are also no secret tunnels or other passages leading out of the room. So o one can get in or out of the room, and there is nothing in the room but your bloody corpse. Yet somehow, I've escaped. How did I leave a room that was completely sealed from the outside world? That is my mystery I pose to you, Erika Furudo!” 

Battler stood from his chair and pointed directly at Erika with his index finger, a declaration of challenge that she simply could not refuse.

“And I will destroy it like I have the works of author far greater then you, Battler!” Erika said as if possessed by a demon. 

There was little that excited Erika more then having a mystery set before her, fresh and ripe for the solving. To an outsider, she might have looked like a predator ready to pounce upon a small defenseless bit of prey and then rip them apart into a million bloody pieces. But for Battler, who knew Erika better then anyone, he knew this was merely how she looked when she was excited and her heart beat faster then a jackhammer. It was a side of her he very much enjoyed and didn't mind seeing every once in awhile.

“First, confirm for me how many walls are in the room.” Erika said as her demonic zeal turned analytic.

“There are four walls, as I stated, all of them are to tough to be broken down or otherwise destroyed.

“Good! Now, can the door be broken?”

“No, it was in perfect condition after my escape.”

“Hm, and the ceiling?” 

“Nothing in the room can be destroyed or otherwise damaged to aid in my escape.”

“Damn, this is tricky.” Erika thought to herself as she bit down on her own upperlip. “But there must be something I'm missing...how could he have killed me and then escaped without touching the door, windows, ceiling, or walls?”

Then an idea came to the young detective, one that brought a bright smile to her pale face. “Then you must have used a trap door that opened out of the floor!” she yelled. “Give up, because I have you in check, Battler.”

Battler rolled his eyes, snickered, and then nodded in the negative. “Remember, I said that at the time of my escape there were no secret passages or other tricks in the room. You're close, but not quite there.”

“Then what is it?!” she yelled. “Did a witch just appear and poof you out of the room?”

“There is no supernatural explanation for my escape either.” Battler laughed again. “Do you give up?”

Erika growled at her partner as the beginning of several tears began to pool in her eyes. She did not wish to lose but victory seemed so far away from her, like a mirage in the middle of the desert. So, for the first time in her life, Erika Furudo resigned from a mystery in defeat. “You win, Battler.” she nearly cried. “Tell me how you did it.”

“Oh, that was easy. Remember when you said there was a trap door in the floor? Well you were half-right.”

“But you said there were no hidden passages.” she sobbed.

“Right, but your forgetting what I actually said that there were no hidden passages at the time of my escape. That is because I dug one on the way out because the room was a shed with a dirt floor. Then I filled it back in after I was already outside. So, at the time I specified, there was in fact no secret passages in the room.” Battler in his victory grinned, for this was his first win against the future detective. “So what did you think? Was that a great mystery or what?”

In a fit of ultimate frustration, Erika jumped to her feet, her eyes filled with tears, and began to beat on Battler's chest in a steady rhythm. “Damnnnn you, Batttler! How could you defeated my perfect logic with such a simple trick?!” she whined into the older boy's chest. “I've prepared for an entire year for this game, but you tore it all down with a single piece of of stupid world play. I hate you, I hate you I hate you, Battler Ushiromiya! Thanks to you I'll never become a real detective...”

As Erika sobbed and wailed, Battler kept silent, knowing from years of playing with the blue-haired girl that it was best to let moments like these run their course before intervening. Such was the case with Erika, she was a person who loved others not for their company, but rather because they provided a target upon which to reflect her own skills, abilities, and intelligence. For every game she was able to win, mystery solve, and struggle otherwise overcome, her ego bloated just a little, allowing her to view herself from an ever higher pedestal. It was this height that was the problem, for the higher one falls from, the worse the impact will be in the end. And, for Erika, it had felt as if she had fallen from the highest peak in the world and broken everything she held dear.

It would take nearly ten minutes for Erika to regain some semblance of composure, and in that time she had sworn to all the gods and demons that she thought would listen that she not only would defeat Battler next they met, but also that she would utterly destroy him, rip his soul from his body and claim it for herself for all eternity. And while she, did Battler only smiled and nodded, then, in a lull between her many threats and cries, he placed his hand on Erika's head and rubbed her hair gently, making sure not to disturb the flowery bonnet she often wore when not on duty. 

“If you want my soul that badly, then you can just have it.” he laughed. “Its not like I'm doing anything with it anyway.”

It was then that Erika began to calm down, only for her rage to be replaced with another emotion entirely. Once more it felt like a tight knot had formed in her stomach, and today she could not blame it on the fishy cooking of the head maid. 

“hmph, why would I want something as worthless as that?” Erika turned her head away and let loose the rest of her tears, only to find that Battler now held her tightly to his chest, likely, she thought in her great deductive reasoning, to prevent another assault from her tiny fists. And for the second time in just under an hour, the great detective was wrong.

“But you want to be a detective, right? If you owned the rights to my soul, I'd have to do everything I can to help make that happen.”

Erika dried her eyes and looked up from the young boy's embrace to gaze upon, once more, the same happy expression that had knotted her stomach into a lovely ribbon. It was the sort of youthful expression that promised ridiculous things, like that he would be someones prince or promising to rescue them from their droll daily life on the back of a white horse. But Erika thought herself to smart to fall for such a trick of emotional manipulation, for she desired nothing of the sort.

“And how would you do that?” she asked still sniffling.

“Well,” Battler thought long and hard, the dreams of youth were near infinite, but when they began to encompass another person, that was when things became difficult. For when you have to take into account the feelings, wishes, and desires of another, then the world didn't seem so big, or the ocean so wide, as there was only you and them, forever and ever. “Next year, I'll work really hard to get some money, then I'll be able to take you away from this island forever. I'll even ask mom and dad if you can live with us if I have to. Then we can start a detective agency like the one in all these stories, and you can solve the cases and I'll be your assistant! It'll be great.”

Erika was speechless. Had she a voice, she would have objected and said that it wouldn't have been that easy, that money was hard to come by, especially for a children like the two of them, and that his parent's didn't exactly care all that much about her. But she didn't, and instead found herself wanting to believe every word that Battler had just said. It was a strange feeling for someone who had made a hobby of seeing through lies and half-truths, but it still felt as if anyone could make that happen, it was Battler. “Do you really mean it?” she asked half in a bliss-induced trance. “Can you really take me away from here?”

“I'll try my best. And next year, when I get on that boat to go home, I'll take you with me and we can solve as many mysteries as we want.”

And with that, Erika's face went ablush and her heart began to beat at a mile a minute. “Then I'll have to call you Watson from now one!” she yelled to shroud her true feelings. “Because you're going to my assistant until the day you die, and then I'll make your ghost help to.”  
“I did say I'd give you my soul.” Battler laughed in his usual odd way. “But are you feeling any better?”

Erika nodded quietly. “I'll just have to beat you in a game next time we meet, and I won't make it easy.”

“I wouldn't want you to.” he said. “So its a deal then? Next year we'll have one last game, then get out of here forever, right?”

“If you can keep that promise, then yes. I'll be waiting.”

“I guess that means I'll have a lot of work to do.”

Battler soon released Erika from a long embrace and looked out the slanted window that connected her dingy bedroom with the outside world. The world outside Rokkenjima was so big, and there was so much to see and do. He wondered what it would be like for Erika, who had lived her entire life on the island and nearby lands, to finally be able to spread her wings. She was smart, perhaps event to much so, and knew more then most of the adults on the island, at least when it came to mysteries. Maybe she really could become a legendary detective. No, he corrected himself silently, she would, and he would make it happen.

***

A year passed, and Erika stood at Rokkenjima's boat landing in her full formal wear, a ruffled pink dress and matching headpiece, with giddy excitement for the return of her best friend and eternal rival. Alongside the other servants she waited patiently as the various adults of the Ushiromiya family set foot on the island with their heavy bags filled with fancy clothes and other high end goods. Alongside them were the cousins as well, who seemed to grow bigger with each passing year while she remained small, but while the usual cast of characters were all accounted for, the person most important to Erika had failed to show himself. 

The omission brought Erika to the edge of tears. She had waited an entire year clinging to the hope that this time, she would finally be free of the Ushiromiya family and the oppressive confines of their island home. She had long dreamed of the day when she could solve real world crimes and dramatically yell at criminals that “You are the culprit!” with one finger outstretched and a confident smile on her face. Yet that dream would have to remain only that for the time being, as her ticket out of this place, the boy who had promised her his very soul, was nowhere to be found. 

Nervously, she approached a man in a blue suit with fine black hair dotted by a few speckles of gray. His name was Rudolph, and he was Battler's father. “Excuse me, sir.” Erika asked quietly, as she had always adopted a more formal tone when addressing the family directly, and saved her complaints for private. “Is Battler not coming to the conference this year?”

Rudolph sighed. The story of Battler's absence was a long one filled with lengthy family drama, in-fighting, and the righteousness of a boy in his early teens. It was also not something he felt like recounting fresh off the boat, and instead offered her the short version of the tale. “I'm afraid not, there was some drama at home and, because of it, Battler will be staying with his grandparents for now. 

Erika nodded, all the while suppressing her inner urge to wail at the top of her lungs and curse Battler's existence for failing to keep his promise of a year past. She couldn't appear overly emotional in front of the adults, as they had enough to complain about her already.  
Erika would spend the rest of that years conference redoubling her effort to better her skills as a would-be detective, and devoured and destroyed any story she could get her hands on with a zeal greater then any she had shown before. “I will not let you get off easy for this, Battler! Come next year I will make you keep that promise, or I'll kill you myself!”

But she would be able to do neither, as the next year Battler once more failed to appear. But what came in his place was a letter, though short in length, it spoke volumes and placed in Erika's heart just enough will to keep going. It read as follows:

“Dear Erika,

I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it to the conference the last two years. Dad did some really stupid stuff and now I'm living with my mom's grandparents. It's not a bad place, but it just isn't the same as spending the conference with you. So if you're reading this, I'll try to get back as soon as I can. Just give me some time to sort things out, then I can keep that promise I made to you. 

Battler.”

Erika crumbled the heartfelt letter into a small ball and tossed it into the trash bin near the door of her room. “Stupid Battler.” she said to herself and sighed.

The cycle would continue for four more years, as Battler failed to appear and left only a short letter to explain his absence. Erika's did not despair, however. As hers was a mind not of sadness, but rather of burning fury. For each year that had passed by had only serrved stoked the flames in her heart, and driven her to study hard, to destroy more and more of what the world's best mystery authors had worked countless hours to create, and all in the name of a game she had no idea would eve  
r occur or not. She would have her revenge, she often thought during those four long years and she would force, Battler, with force if necessary, to take her away from the endless boredom and torture of living as a lowly maid on an isolated island. 

It was then, shortly before the 6th year of her long vigil, that word of a near miracle spread throughout the manor. Battler would return to Rokkenjima that October , many said excitedly, and such words filled Erika's heart with glee. Dashing back to room after hearing such things, she smiled wide and sly. 

Good!“” she said to herself in English.

And it was then that she noticed that her stomach felt knotted once more.


	2. The Detective Falls in Love Part 2

The wait had seemed like an eternity. Six long years Erika spent reading and tempering a grudge born of a desire for revenge and companionship, and though some often say that absence only makes the heart grow fonder, but for Erika Furudo the only thing that had grown in her heart was a surging desire for vengeance. Over half a decade ago Battler Ushiromiya had defeated her in a simple game of logic, and she had never forgotten just how awful that felt. She was the best, the smartest, the most observant. Yet she had missed a single simple trick of wordplay that had led to her downfall. It was something she would never forgive, or at least not until the indignity against her person was avenged ten fold in a game of her own, one so devilish and wicked that only the lord of hell himself could have come up with it. 

But it was not only a desire to tear apart Battler and hoist his remains upon a flag pole that motivated Erika to keep going, rather it was the latter part of the fateful days that she clung to as the world around her changed, but she remained ever the same. Back then the same boy she promised to defeat with all of her might had promised that he would spirit her from the slights and indifference of Rokkenjima for greener pastures where she could finally live her childhood dreams of solving mysteries in a place besides the confines of her own head,

And in her own head is where she had lived for all of those longs years, dreaming of what may come and solving mysteries that existed only printed on the pages of paper yellowed from decades of exposure to the sun and elements. The island was an awful place, and there was little reason to leave her room aside from doing her meningeal domestic work. Natushi, as person most often in charge of the family's many servants, had often complained that it seemed like Erika's head was in the clouds, or another place entirely. But the would-be detective cared little that last year, for whisper from on high confirmed something that she had been waiting six years to hear, Battler Ushiromiya would be returning to for that year's family conference. 

Upon hearing such news, Erika had first questioned its validity, as any good student of logic would. “Why would Battler, who had gone to live with his grandparents after a fight with his father, finally return after so many long years?” she thought to herself. But the answer was honestly a simple one, Battler was not so stubborn a soul that he would allow his pride and convictions to override the bonds he shared with others and, for the sake of his sister and a certain other person, he had returned to the Ushiromiya family for the sake of keeping a number of promises he had made in his youth. It was a truth that could not be uncovered with investigation and logic, and thus eluded Erika like a butterfly might a small child with a net. Though it may have been just within her reach, she could not truly grasp it with her own two hands. As a certain witch in a time and place far removed from Erika's own often said “Without love, it cannot be seen.”

Preperation for the return of her beloved partner in-crime was a simple task for Erika. For all she needed was her wits, a good story, and a few choice words for why he had been gone for so very long. All of these things she wrote upon a notepad a bit every night from a week or so before the weekend in which Battler and the rest of his family would arrive at the island's old dock. She would begin things, she thought, by first grandstanding like villain in a comic serial and then, once they were alone, challenge him to a game in which the honor of them both lay on the line. But which game to play? It couldn't be anything as silly or simple as Battler's murderous word games, no it had to be much bigger then that!

So she thought for several nights, wracking her braincells for all that they were worth in an effort to devise a proper mystery for the coming weekend. Yet, even after a dozen or so hours spread across multiple days, she could come up with little besides the norm. It was frustrating, and drove Erika to want to tear out all of her deep-blue hair. But before she could deforest her own head, the time for her fateful reunion had finally come. In many ways, this was the happiest she had been in many years. Her partner, and future assistant and packmule, would return and finally spirit her from this island and her drab and mind-numbing daily life. But, at the same time, such happiness was blunted by a small feeling of dejection, she had not been able to come up with a game for the two of them to play. A sort of send of to their old lives and one last go around before their minds were to be focused on greater truths. Yet she had nothing for him, no present to mark the occasion.

She laid her head upon her old desk and sighed. “This is awful.” she thought to herself. “What will Battler say when I tell him I haven't prepared a game for us?”

He would probably laugh as he always did, pat her on the head, and say “Its ok, we've got forever for you to think of another.” The thought brought a blush to Erika's face that she quickly dismissed with a shake of her head. But if she couldn't manifest a mystery of her own, why not borrow that which another person had come up with? True, she couldn't use one they'd both read. That simply wouldn't do. But there one she had known in her youth spent reading in the family head's study. “The Witch's Epitaph...” Erika repeated to herself in a sleepy haze. “That's it!”

Near the front of the Ushiromiya family manor lay a portrait of a woman with beautiful blonde hair and sporting a dress that would have made Victorian-era fashionistas jealous. By the legend of the island, she was the Witch Beatrice, a magical figure who haunted the island and played tricks on its inhabitants in the depth of night. But more then that, it was also said that she was the mysterious figure who had granted Kinzo Ushiromiya, the family head, the gold that had marked the beginning of his fabulous rise to power and riches. Below the fine painting lay a plaque with a strange missive written on it. To long to reproduce from memory, she nevertheless remembered that some thought it to be some kind of riddle, and though it had stood for sometime now, no one had yet managed to solve it.

A devilish smile crept across Erika's weary face. “This will be our final battlefield, Battler!” she cried in a loud tone. She could have gone on for ages about how the older boy should prepare himself, and that she would tear him apart and feed his remains to the fish in the ocean surrounding the island. But the hour was late and Erika tiered. Before she could manage to continue her monologue, a small yawn escaped from her mouth and a brought a small blush to her face. 

“Oh...time for bed.” she said realizing how late it was. 

From her chair she stood and made her way to bed, carefully tucking herself in and then falling into the darkest parts of the night where she dreamed of crushing Battler beneath her heel, and laying quietly in his embrace.

***  
On that Friday, Erika dressed herself in her finest clothing and waited with baited breath at the docks as she had every year for the last six years. So excited she was, that she couldn't help herself but to be just a bit giddy and thus completely incapable of standing still. 

She watched members of the Ushiromiya family filed off the boat one by one with all of their things while chatting and laughing all the while. From Erika's vantage point she could see that they all had aged even from last year. Eva's brown hair now showed signs of gray, as did many of the older set, and even handsome Rudolph looked a bit wrinkled as the concept of time marched ever forward. But what truly caught her attention was the cousins, for they were closer to her age yet had changed the most. Alongside his mother and father, George had arrived dressed in a fine suit and had a stately air to him that seemed to scream that he would be an important person in the near future. Yet his face always seemed to have a forlorn and distant look on it, as if something was missing from his life that he just couldn't grasp. Next came Maria, now nine years old, who talked strangely and dressed herself equally so. She had grown obsessed with the magic and the occult over the years, things most outgrow by her age, and seemed to bother her mother Rosa to no end. Erika, with her keen eye and near perfect memory, could sense that nothing good could come of that.

But last came Battler. And his appearance stole breath from Erika's lungs and made her gasp for dear life. No longer the small boy who stood perhaps half a head taller then her, Battler now dwarfed the tiny girl by a good six inches or so, making her appear as a small child if the two were to stand next to each other. He was dressed in a fine white jacket and pants, a red shirt, and cross-shaped necklace that lent an air to him that was at the same time silly but also mildly impressive. 

Thus was something of a sticking point with Erika, while all of the other children she had know were grown, save for Maria, and tall. She had remained small, barely standing over five feet tall, and looked more like a dress-up doll then a great solver of mysteries. She would look ridiculous standing beside Battler, and if they did ever managed to succeed in that promise of long ago, it was very likely, she thought, that customers might think that he was the detective and her his secretary or something of the sort!

Before her delusion could get to far, Battler had approached Erika and now stood only a few feet from her. “Yo, I'm back.” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Battler laughed, as if their time apart had been something of a cosmic joke. 

But Erika, who had memorized a speech like that a villain of the silver screen might spew in challenge to the hero, forgot anything she had prepared to say in that moment and only managed to look at Battler and yell.

“You idiot,” she whined. “You can't just show up here and pretend like it hasn't been six years since we saw each other.”

And Battler patted her on the head, much as he had the last time they'd met, and sighed. “I suppose I can't.” he smirked. “But hey, here I am. Problem solved.”

Erika beat on his chest a bit, causing Battler's parents, Kyrie and Rudolph, to sigh and shake their heads. “That's quite the girl you've got yourself involved with.” Rudolph said. 

“Would you expect any less from me, dad?” 

Rudolph had sometimes, years ago, imagined the sort of girl that Battler would someday end up with. That she would be the sort who could put up with his constant jabs, lighthearted attitude, and general goofiness. And the fact that he often treated those he loved with the same tact he did his male friends, Erika seemed to be all these things, as far as he could see. But how he'd managed to get close to such a strange person, and a servant of the family at that, was a story he was completely in the dark about.

“Shut up!” Erika yelled. “We have work to do.”

“Do we?” Battler said.

“Yes,” she said in a low voice that still reeled from their long coming reunion. “I have a game for you, and it is the most difficult I've ever come across.”

“Woah, sounds like you've been busy while I've been gone.”

“What else was I supposed to do for six years, you idiot! My brain would have gone to rust if I didn't keep thinking everyday.

“I suppose so.” Battler said. “But before we do that, why don't you come and have dinner with the rest of the family? Think of it as my way of paying you back for missing the last.” he began to count on the fingers of his left hand. “Six meetings...wow, I have been gone along time.”

At those words, the older members of the crowd turned their heads and gave Battler a general look of disapproval. Though it was Eva, bedecked in an interesting combination of a brown gown and lightly colored pants, that finally rose her voice in protest.

“She's a servant, Battler. There is no room at the family dinner for some one like her.” Eva said in objection.

Battler only put up his hands and shook his head, he would not back down easily, even to his rather imposing aunt. “Then if we don't have room, then I'll just sit her on my lap the whole dinner. There should be enough room that way, right?”

Eva scoffed, and Erika blushed. Neither were sure what to make of Battler's frankly insane suggestion. “Do whatever you want!” the older woman yelled. “Father will have the final decision on the matter, either way.”

Battler smiled once more, reveling a bit in his little victory. “Hear that, Erika?” he stated. “Looks like its up to grandpa if you've got a seat of your own or not. Otherwise, on my lap you go.”

Erika had heard many silly things from Battler in the many years they'd spent the conference together, and in the letters they had sent back and forth in the meantime. But this by far took the cake, and was so completely out of let field, that even the great detective that Erika was could not find the words to describe how embarrassed and/or looking forward to such a thing actually happening as she was.

“Shut up!” she repeated in a near panic.

“Ihihihi.” Battler laughed. “But why don't we hit the beach while dinner is in the works? It's to nice a day to spend locked up inside and it might rain for the rest of the weekend..” 

“That sounds like a good idea.” George, ever the voice of reason within the ranks of the younger portion of the family, chimed in in an attempt to defuse the tense situation. “I'll get Jessica and we'll meet you, Erika, and Maria there.”

Battler nodded. “Sounds good, now you two follow me and we'll get going.”

“Uuuuu, beach party!” Maria said.   
Erika however remained silent, still unsure to think of the events that had just transpired right in front of her. “What are you trying to do here, you idiot?” she thought to herself. 

***  
Though the next day would bring storm and raging seas to Rokkenjima, the present offered only the brisk breeze of a wonderful October afternoon. Often, when visiting the island the beach would become a place to get away from the hustle and posturing of the adults constant bickering over money, influence, and who's child was the best by some vague metric. It was also here, six years ago, that Erika had first met Battler while indulging in a book. He was much smaller then, but his heart had been just as big as it was now. It was the first time in her life that she'd felt a warm sensation in her heart, and it was that same feeling that now enveloped her chest and brought an awkward stammer to her voice.

Erika, Maria, and Battler walked down the winding steps that led to the island's beach. Along the way, various greenery still rose into full bloom, as the cold of autumn had yet to claim their sylvan grandeur. It was a lovely view, and would have been romantic, had any of the ever actually been in love before. Both Erika and Maria, whom the detective was only a head or so taller then, both clung to Battler like small puppies. One because she was so young, the other because her heart screamed at her to do something to relive the pressure building in her own soul.

“It really is nice out here, huh Erika?” Battler said as he surveyed the horizon.

“No party?” Maria asked, tugging on the hem of Battler's pants and completely taking over the conversation in the process.

“Not today. We're just taking a break while our moms and dads take care of some adult stuff.” he said.

“Uuuuu....” Maria voiced in dejection.

“The adults can only bicker about how to deal with the Head's eventual death for so long.” Erika mused. “Then they'll have to break for dinner sooner or later..”

“Yeah, but for now, lets just enjoy ourselves.” Battler said, not wanting to talk any longer about the ongoing machinations of the older portion of his extended family. “Its a perfectly good day, and who knows how long we'll be stuck inside once the typhoon hits.”

Battler led the two small girls following him to the past the slope that had led them downward, and onto the soft, white sand of the islands nearly untouched beach. It was there that he turned to his entourage and offered them a kind word.

“So, how has everyone been?” he said. It was a conversation meant to buy time until the rest of the cousins arrived, for most of what he had to say, was reserved for Erika alone.

“Uuuuu, Momma's been gone a lot lately and left Maria alone... But I'm not lonely, I've got Sakutaro and the rest of my friends to play with!” the small girl smiled at her older cousin. 

“Sakutaro?” Erika and Battler said in near unison.

“Mhm! He's a lion cub, but he doesn't eat meat so that makes him a vegetarian lion. Momma got him for my birthday and we've been friends ever since, uuuu.”   
As Maria smiled, Erika crept close to Battler and whispered into his ear. “Do nine year olds normally not know that their stuffed animals aren't alive? A girl that age shouldn't be so dumb and slow.”

Battler frowned. “Erika!” he said in a hushed tone. “Maria is a special case, so try not to be to hard on her, Erika. For me, ok?”

Had they been alone together, Erika likely would have called out Maria, pointed out the non-living nature of her beloved toy, and exposed the poor child to an unending cascade of heavy reality just for the sake of doing so. She was not a nice person, but rather saw herself as an exposer of truths. Under her watch, no lie should go unmolested and no fantasy left standing. But for Battler, she would back down just this once. 

“Is that so.” Erika sighed as every fiber of her being screamed for her to correct the small girl in the most verbally invasive means possible. “Did you bring this “lion” with you today?”

Maria fell to a quiet hush, as if there was nothing more to say on this topic that didn’t hurt to think about. “Uuuuu.” she bleated in sadness, while fixing her eyes firmly to the ground.

“Anyway,” Battler said in an attempt to break the dark aura that had manifest itself around them, “I think I see Jessica and George, lets go meet up with them.”

All involved followed him as they walked down the beach, Battler waving, and met with the rest of their young kin. 

Jessica Ushiromiya was just a year younger then Battler, and by extension a year older then Erika, and actually lived on Rokkenjima year round and commuted to school by ferry. She was a tomboy, and often played the part by answering her friends laughter with her fists and a well-crafted pair of brass knuckles. But no matter how her life had gone, for all of her seventeen years, she had yet to find a boyfriend. Confined to the island with no one her own age to talk to and little time to hangout with friends due to matters of distance and time, she was often lonely and said that she to would leave the island the second she graduated. Such was a repeated theme of those in the latest generation of the Ushiromiya family, love was a solitary emotion that seemed to have long ago left the isolated landscape and left a dreary look upon all those who had not yet grasped it with their own two hands.

 

Jessica wore her blond hair up in a pony tail, and wore a combination of shirt, jacket, and skirt that befit her tomboyish persona. When she was younger, she had dressed in a more feminine manner, but it simply did not fit her. So, as she grew, most of these well worn and feminine finery had formed the basis of Erika's wardrobe. 

“Hey Battler! Long time no see.” she said cheerfully as she approached the rest of the younger set with George in tow.

“Yo, Jessica. Good to see you. How are things?” 

“About the same, I guess.” she said, nothing ever really changed on Rokkenjima, for it was a place seemingly lost in time and unaffected by the constantly changing nature of the outside world. 

“What about you, George?” Battler turned and asked of the oldest member of their group.  
“Mom arranged a marriage interview for me shortly after the conference.” he said. “So I guess I'll be getting hitched soon.”

George laughed, but it was a sort of halfhearted giggle that belied far deeper problems in the human psyche. George Ushiromiya was a man who had long ago placed women upon a pedestal, and made a promise to himself to treat them in kind. He was the sort who was nice, kind, and could speak of chivalry and the sort of thing that man women swoon in old books, but never worked in real life, and yet had never dated anyone himself. Thus, he to had never experienced true love either. In another time and place his heart would have known the connection of a simple servant girl who could mend the wrongs of his heart and mind, but here, where only Erika herself existed, that would never happen. For George would likely marry the woman his mother Eva had chosen for him, follow in his father's footsteps as a businessman, and that was that.

“But it looks like you and Erika are getting along well, are you two dating yet?” he said, his words barbed with just a tinge of jealously.

Battler laughed off his cousin's words with his trademark laugh, but Erika herself boiled and blustered. Her face turned red and she pointed finger firmly at George as she began to shake just a bit, she then yelled at him with all of her might.

“Of course not! Battler is just my assistant, and promised that someday he would take me away from this stupid place. He is not my boyfriend.” the small girl huffed and smoldered. “But he does belong to me.”

Battler patted her on the head again, something that had become rather easy with his rather extreme increase in height since they had last met. “Right, right. And as soon as dinner is over we can get down to that game you've come up for me to solve.”

Erika grumbled like an angry dog and yipped in kind, Battler laughed, and in the pit of George’s stomach, he felt the pangs of jealousy for the first time in ages.

The cousins would then sit down upon a blanket that George and Jessica had brought from the manor, and began to talk of the past year and, for Battler, the past six. Between them was mention of school, George's possible marriage, and their dreams for the future. Jessica had simply wanted to go off to college and live a life of her own, while George wanted a family like that his mother and father had managed to cultivate. Maria was to young for such talk, and prattled on about wanting to be a Witch, but Erika kept quiet for the entirety of the discussion. It was to soon to reveal herself to the rest of the family, for if she just waited a few hours more, the impact of her announcement both her latest game, and the direction she had chosen in life, would be increase tenfold.

The talk then reached Battler, who thought for a moment and then smiled before answering.

“I've got no real plans,” he said. “But I guess it really depends on Erika over here.”

He grabbed hold of the small girl and roped her closer to him across the blanket. Erika protested loudly with unintelligible yelling, but did not offer the least of resistance from her small body. 

“I did promise her I'd get her off of the island someday, and I've got to keep my word on this one.”

“You'd better.” Erika said. “Or I'll kill you and write a novel about how I did it.”

“I know I know” Battler laughed, but knew all to well that Erika might actually be capable of such a thing.

From across the small expanse of the blanket Jessica giggled, seeing the two of them together gave her just a sliver of hope for her own life. If she could just get out of here herself, then maybe she could find someone to.

George, on the other hand, only looked a bit down.

It was then that from the path Battler and the others had taken that Ginji, the head servant and an elderly man dressed in a black suit, appeared with news. “Dinner is almost ready, the five of you should hurry and take your places before the master arrives from his study.”

The group nodded to one another and packed up the afternoon's supplies, then proceeded to go off for dinner. “Wait!” Erika added as they left the beach. “Do I have a seat at the dinner table?”

The head servant said nothing in return, and the six of them soon arrived at the manor, where fine food and taxing talk would be the order of the evening. 

***  
The dining room was a long room decorated in just a stately, and western, manner as the rest of the island's manor. In its center lay an enormous banquet-style table covered in all manner of fine food and drink far more expensive then someone like Erika could ever hope to indulge in. Thus she felt horribly out of place as she sat at the high table, and as if the eyes of everyone over the age of thirty at the table seemed to be fixated on the fact that, as far as they were concerned, she should not be there.

As per conference tradition, each member of the extended Ushiromiya family sat around the table in order by their rank in the family. By this system, Krauss and his family would always come first, while Rosa would always come last. In turn, each of the siblings were joined by their partner and children at either side, save for Rudolph's family who, this night, was joined by one more, as Erika now sat beside Battler in a chair borrowed from the kitchen. It had been Genji and Kumasawa's idea to simply let the young servant sit at the table without telling anyone, as the fighting over her presence would likely be more trouble then it was worth with talk of inheritance in the air. But that did not stop Eva, who had before objected very directly to Erika's inclusion in their time-honored family tradition, from gazing daggers at the small girl.

“I don't like the way your aunts and uncles are looking at me.” Erika whispered to Battler. 

“Never mind them, Erika.” Battler said quietly. “Just hold out until grandpa shows up, and then they'll be to busy to worry about you.

“I hope so.” she sighed. 

Erika Furudo had never felt at home within the the Ushiromiya family. Though there was talk of her adoption in the early days of her stay on Rokkenjima, there was no need as every branch of the family had a child capable of inheriting the family name and all that it stood for. Erika? She was merely a hanger on who had been saved from a gruesome fate by the luck of a rare combination of tide and current. Thus, befitting her status, she had been made a servant and cared for only as far as she was useful for making beds and setting tables. But that alienation she felt within her own adotped home had only grown worse since Battler had returned to the island. Whereas the family had once ignored her outside of her work, her closeness to Battler had painted a bulls eye on her head the size of a small planet. She could now never escape the barbed gazes and sharp words leveled against her, but for the sake of her future, she must endure. Just as she had for six years of holding only a promise in her heart, and boiling rage in her blood.

As the elder siblings talked amongst themselves, their chatter was soon interrupted by Genji's stately presence. Standing at the head of the table, in a deep voice, he announced something that instantly brought a hush to the lips of everyone in the room.

“The Master will now join us for dinner.” he stated plainly.

Kinzo Ushiromiya walked into the room in a state of dead silence, as no one, even Erika, had the courage to talk over his entrance. The head of the Ushiromiya family was dressed in a fine white suit and stately cape, resembling in both appearance and stand like the tyrant of some small, third-world dictatorship. With a wheeze, as he was well over 80 years of age, he took his position at the head of the table and furrowed his eyebrows as a look of displeasure manifest upon his wrinkled face. It was no secret that the family head had never enjoyed these conference, but in recent years, as the cold hand of death crept ever closer to his person, the time spent here bickering and fighting over nothing but yen and gold, had grown especially tiresome.

“I see you've all once more gathered to decide how you will carve up my corpse once I'm dead. But I've not passed on yet! All of your talk is as worthless as this meeting! If you really want all of this money, and the ttle that goes with it, then prove yourselves worthy! In all of my life I've never seen any of you do anything worthy of being called the head. Yet you've all come here to bicker among yourself about who most deserve the title, but if you were to ask me...the answer is none of you! None of you are worthy of inheriting everything I've built with my own blood and sweat in 80 years of life.” To go with his grand, end-boss, like speech Kinzo closed his eyes and thrust both of his hands upward like he were beseeching some deity or another to aid him in chastising his worthless children.

To nervous to speak, the various siblings began to chatter quietly amongst themselves. The entire purpose of the meet for the last few years had been just as Kinzo described, to formulate and implement a plan of attack should he finally pass on from this world and leave his vast fortune and holding up for grabs. It would be easy enough to just split the pile four ways, but as long as their father was still alive, it was very unlikely then any real agreement could be reached. For to call Kinzo Ushiromiya an eccentric...that was a generous description at best.

“But father...!” Krauss said before being cut off by another of Kinzo's grand gestures.

“SILENCE!” he yelled. “You buzzards don't even deserve to feast upon my corpse, let alone take it all for yourself. You've done nothing but squander everything I've given you, and now expect the rest after I'm dead? NO! You will not have it as long as I have a say in things. Perhaps if your children have some drive, some real ambition to do something with their short lives they may have a chance! But none of you will ever inherit this family's fortune.”

The head had spoken. The siblings were silent. Indeed it seemed as if the entire world had held its breath at once, so uncomfortable was the present situation. “This is my chance!” Erika thought to herself. This was the opening she had been waiting for, and she would not let it pass for anything. Then, mustering all of the courage and strength she could manage, rose from her seat, though she was barely taller then the table itself and looked rather silly from any angle, and began to cackle at the top of her lungs.

“And who is this?!” Kinzo demanded.

Natsuhi readied herself to answer, and spun a tale in her mind of how Erika was nothing more but a poor servant girl who had been allowed to live by the generous graces of the Ushiromiya family. But Erika would have none of that, and instantly launched into a speech of her own that could rival Kinzo's of a few moments before in terms of grandeur.

“I am Erika Furudo, the Detective!” she yelled. “And from my research, I've gleaned that there was another means of choosing the head that doesn't require any bickering on our part.”

Once more whispers rumbled round the table. How could this girl have found something they hadn't? So went the general sentiment of the siblings.

“Oho, now have you?” Kinzo laughed. “And what is that little girl?”

“There exists on this island a riddle known as the “Witches Epitaph,” and it is said that whoever solves it will be given not only the headship, but also all of the gold on which this family's fortune was founded!” 

Erika had done much research in her young life, and had spent months tracking down every piece of information she could find concerning the Epitaph and the story of its creation. While she had realized from picking the brains of the other servants and reading ever book she could get her hands on that it was a challenge of sorts, but the story behind it was far stranger then she had ever known. For it was said that the Epitaph was a challenge from the Golden Witch Beatrice, a mysterious women said to be the one who had given Kinzo his grand stores of gold decades ago and a means of leading whomever solved it to great riches. 

“And what do you intend to do with that information?” Krauss asked the young servant. “Do you intend to take the headship for yourself?

“I'll solve it, of course. For who is more suited to unraveling this mystery then me? I've spent years tackling mysteries far more devious then this one, and it should be a simple matter to decipher some world play and find where the gold has been buried on this small island.” Erika gloated with several hand gestures. “But I don't want to be the head of this stupid family either, nor do I want all of that heavy gold. All I want is my freedom, and to be able to leave this island and follow my dreams! You can all rot here for all I care, but it would be a waste for my intellect and perfect senses to go to rust here.”

Kruass fumed, and struck the table with one of his heavy fists. A boxer in his college days, the strength of his blow sent shook the long table and caused the glassware sitting on it to shake and shutter in sway with the shock. “How dare you come to this dinner table and then insult the family that has given you clothing, shelter, and work for the last decade!” he said. “Who do you think you are?”

He would have said more, but the first in line of the Ushiromiya family line of succession once more found himself cut off by his bombastic father.

“This is the sort of drive I was looking for, the sort of ambition necessary to lead this family!” Kinzo yelled. “You have my permission, little girl, to try and solve the Epitaph! And if any of you fools should want to try and do so yourself, then you are welcome to try as well. But I doubt anything will come of it!”

“But, father, she is just a servant!” Natsuhi complained.

“SILENCE! I've spoken! Anyone who wishes to try and grasp the headship with their own hands is now welcome to it. Regardless of their connection to this family or not, I will honor their hard fought victory upon my death. That is my final answer to this issue and I will speak no more on the petty manner so long as I still draw breath.” he said. “Now lets eat, I'm starving.”

It was then the that the chaos of the scramble to solve the Epitaph began, it would be a long long night for all involved. But it was only now for Erika, who had taken her seat and now stared directly at Battler with a wide smile, that the true contest would begin.

“This is my last challenge to you, Battler! This Epitaph will serve as our final battleground!” she yelled, though everyone else seemed to be shocked by Kinzo's declaration to care about the noise.

“You weren't lying when you said you'd come up with something really tough.” he said. “But you're on, Erika! As soon as dinner is over we get down to business, and I can kick your butt just like I did six years ago.”

“” the young girl said in English. “You will see just how far my reasoning can take me, Battler. I will solve this mystery and bury you once and for all before you can even formulate a theory!”

Erika's panted as all of her grandstanding and yelling began to take a toll on her tiny body, it had been years since she had last felt like this. The thrill of diving into a virgin mystery, one that no one had ever solved before, and thus was ripe for being ripped apart, devoured, and made a yet another trophy of hers to display as a matter of ego and pride surged through her body and made her heart beat at three times its normal speed. Yes, she thought as she looked at Battler and contemplated the mystery at hand, this was how things should be.

“We'll see about that, Erika.” he said while lofting a single finger against the would-be detective. “You're not the only one who's been practicing these past six years.”

And it was then that Erika's stomach began to rumble. Bringing a blush to the youth's face and completely destroying the mood of the moment. “Urgh.” she bellowed. “I need to eat something.”

“Well, yeah?” Battler laughed. “You haven't eaten since I got here.”

It was dinner time, after all. And before she went about answering her own body's call for attention, Erika called for Genji with a wave of her hand. “Could you bring me a pair of chopsticks?” she asked, and the head servant nodded.

And dinner went on as it usually did in the Ushiromiya family manor. 

***

The Epitaph was a puzzle culled directly from the mind of its creator, the family head and would-be sorcerer Kinzo Ushiromiya. Its contents recalled his youth, a time when he saw the future as being bright and wide, and the darkness that followed. It was a riddle of atonement for one who had already passed on, and served as a text to memorialize his greatest of sins. And only when it was solved, and his guilt finally spirited away, that the old man could finally pass on. In another world a certain young girl had managed to do just that, and with her victory had seen her father, as it would so happen, pass on before her very eyes. But with such a chance occurrence, Kinzo yet clung to life like a man adrift at sea may piece of flotsam. 

But for all of that, Erika cared little. The story behind the Epitaph meant nothing to her. For only the riddle itself, its cold objective text, and her own ability to tear it asunder and find the gold it hid mattered. This is what she thought and she and Battler sat in the manor's archive of books both ancient and dusty and sifted through text after text in search of anything that could be of use to their contest of wits. Upon the floor beside the self-proclaimed detective now stood a pile of discarded books nearly as high as her knee, which really wasn't that high, which had been thrown about in a haphazard manner but somehow still managed to land in a pile. She was frustrated, and let out a small dog as she flung yet another book upon the pile she would like to make a pyre, would it not have turned the present situation into a very different type of mystery.

“None of this is any good, its no good at all!” she whined. “How am I supposed to solve this without anything to go on!?”

Battler, who had been searching through the dusty tomes at a much slower pace, looked up from a book of maps and other topographical charts and gave her a concerned look. “Then why don't we take a break? If we're having this much trouble, I doubt my parents are doing any better.”

Erika then barred her teeth and growled. “No, we have to solve this now! I went through all the trouble of declaring myself the detective, and I'll look like an idiot if I can't even solve the Epitaph.”

“Calm down, Erika. Just think. Maybe we should try looking at the Epitaph itself again?” he said in contemplation. “There has to be something we both missed.”

Erika went over in her perfect memory the contents of the golden plaque that lay just below the painting of the Golden Witch. Its innards consisted a mishmash of directions and violent displays that seemed at first glance to recount some kind of journey or other event. But what if it didn't? She thought to herself, and then recalled the last game that she and Battler had played together.

“What if the Epitaph is just a stupidly obtuse word puzzle that old man thought up to test anyone looking for his gold?” Erika thought aloud. “If that was the case, it's likely no normal person would ever be able to solve it. But if some one like me were take each segment of it apart, like that stupid game you beat me at last time, then we might find something useful that anyone else would probably be to dumb to see!”

Their last game had been one in which a simple trick of wordplay, in this case the fact that Battler had not mentioned the status Suddenly, a moment of brilliance hit her, like the light of a great lighthouse turning on for the first time, the answer had to lie in the text itself! In that moment of quiet triumph, Erika grinned an evil grin that signaled a single and utterly indisputable fact; it would only be a matter of time before the Epitaph fell before her.

Battler clapped, Erika may have been a bit rude at times, but it was nice to see her in good spirits again.

“Looks like you've thought of something good.” he said.

“I have!” Erika replied. “Now follow me, my talents are going to waste in this crypt of a room.”

Out of the archive the Erika went almost skipping, while Battler followed not far behind in a more normal means of locomotion. Along the way, Erika explained her reasoning behind how to solve Epigraph, it was a long winded and complicated set of steps, diversions, and rearranging of words that would take ages to explain here. So those who wish to hear the explanation in full should reread part eight of the original visual novel. But once all was said and done, they arrived at the chapel that lay not far from the manor. It was an immense and imposing looking structure that loomed over visitors like a monolith of carved stone and wood. It was above the buildings front door that an odd statement that could be found that read “This door opens only in a chance of one in a quadrillion.” 

As a child Erika had often been told never to set foot in the Gothic cathedral many times, of course this had not stopped her from sneaking in on occasion to see what all the fuss was about, only to find herself sorely disappointed to find nothing truly mysterious lie within its open innards. But this night, she had come with a different plan, for in the vast inner workings of her mind, and some help from Battler, her Detective's intuition had brought her here with the intention of solving the riddle of the Epitaph once and for all.

“This is where it all will end,” Erika giggled before the chapel's heavy wooden door. “Kinzo's riddle will be solved by me, Erika Furudo and no one in this stinking family will ever be able to look down on me ever again. Now if you don't mind, Battler, could you make like a good pack mule and give me a boost?”

“Well sure, I did promise I'd be your assistant...” he said happy. “But what for?” 

“I need to play with the letters up there at the doors frame for a few seconds, that's all.”

Battler nodded and almost instantly grabbed Erika by the waist and hoisted her into the air. Weighing less then one hundred pounds, Erika was far lighter, and shorter for that matter, then most girls her age and quickly found herself sitting up Battler's broad shoulders. Her face came to a blush and she began to flail like a fish beached on a dock. “You could have at least given me a warning before you grabbed me!” she protested.

“But what would be the fun in that? Ihihihi” he laughed.

Erika pouted, but soon went about her precarious work of carefully rearranging the letters of the mysterious phrase found above the chapel door and, after about two minutes of manipulation with her small hands, a loud mechanical sound could be heard from just around the corner. It was the sound of a new passage opening, and welcoming with open arms those who had finally shed light on the island's most well guarded of secrets.

“And there we have it.” she said in triumph.  
“Have what?” Battler asked looking up at his old friend from below.

“The Epitaph.” she said plainly. “I've solved it.”


	3. The Detective Falls in Love Part 3

To the side of the chapel a great whirring of turning gears and other mechanisms heralded to all who heard it that change would soon come to the devil island of Rokkenjima. Following the sounds, Battler and Erika soon found themselves in a dark staircase that spiraled downward ever further before terminating in a single open room. In the dank space lit only a torch radiating gently from the wall, a heavy and ornate door that felt as if it led to something far greater stood on the far side, while a string of numbers eight character in length was painted upon the wall. 

Such was the alien world of the legend of the Epitaph. Not bound by the rules that normally govern reality, it was free to shelter places like these where fact and fiction intertwined and formed a context found no where else in the world, like that of a real-life detective story. The sight of the room, the heat radiating from the lighting above, it all brought a powerful feeling of euphoria that caused her to run about the room and investigating thoroughly anything that caught her interest. With her near perfect memory she cataloged every sight and sound and began to form in her head a working story of her adventure that she could tell once she'd finally fled this awful place.

Battler watched from not far off as his partner in solving the island's greatest mystery ran about like a child in a candy store. It was only hours before that she had declared herself a detective, and made known to everyone at dinner that she intended to crack the case of the Epitaph and make a display of its guts. Though it was only recently that he had realized that Erika was serious all those years ago, when over a simple game she had whined that she would leave the island forever, him in tow, and start a detective agency, but tonight she had more then proven that she could make that fantasy a reality.

“So where's the gold?” he said plainly, causing Erika to stop in her tracks, give him a rather nasty look, and then scoff.

“I was just getting to that,” she sighed while examining the room's construction for the sake of later recounting her own epic tale. “It should be beyond that door over there, why else would a person bother to build a room like this? This whole mess reeks of overcompensation and that old man's crazy hobbies.”

Battler laughed, his grandpa had always been an eccentric, and it made perfect sense that the riddle he had put together was one worthy of the final boss of any RPG of that era and beyond. 

“But shall we?” Erika said with a curtsy and a smile. “The answer to this mystery awaits.”

Battler nodded, and the two opened the heavy door in front of them and soon found themselves in a room fit for royalty. Covered in a gold motif, the room contained furniture and decorations that put even that in the manor to shame. Such was the majesty of the dwelling that even Battler felt out of place in its mere presence, Erika, however, had no such reservations and dashed across the golden landscape only to come face to face with what they had worked for so many hours to discover. For in front of the tiny detective was stacked gold bricks that towered over her like a tree may a tiny sprout. 

A bright glint appeared in the detective's eyes as she beheld the gold. “I've done it!” she screamed to the heavens. “I've finally done it!” she repeated. What she had done, was solve her first real world mystery, one not printed on paper or formulated solely from the confines of her own head. This was honesty to goodness reality and nothing more, and it made her drool a bit, such was her level of excitement.

“All that is left is to call for the rest of the family and show them what I've managed that all of their stupid heads put together couldn't!” she turned to Battler and smirked. “Can you fetch them for me? I know it is late, but I want to grind into their minds that I've won and they've all lost.”

Battler scratched his head and offered an awkward smile of his own. “Well, I could. But doesn't finding the gold make you the next head? You're smart and talented, so why not? Ihihihihi.”

Erika once more glowed a bright red, but quickly shook her head and freed her mind from her heart's iron grip. Battler had praised her! That was good. But the thought of becoming the leader of a family she hated, having to deal with them for the rest of her life, AND being burdened with so much money that she'd never be able to spend no matter how poorly she managed it? That was a living hell from which she might never escape. Thus she wagged her finger in the negative.

“Like I told the rest of your family, I was only in this to solve the Epitaphs riddle, yo show them all what I was capable of, and prove myself as a detective. This gold and the headship? They are all things that they can keep in this closed hell of theirs and bicker over by themselves, because once this night is over, I'm leaving Rokkenjima forever. I imagine after that they'll try and make you the head, Battler.”

It was upon uttering those words that a sharp pain struck Erika's heart and caused her to clutch her chest. “If Battler was made the head,” she thought to herself. “He would be stuck with the same burden the old man held now.” The fortune, family conference, all of these horrible things would be his to oversee and keep running smoothly. He would never have time for other things, no stray moments to take for himself admits the sea of chaos and turmoil that was the Ushiromiya family's state of affairs, but most importantly, there would be no time for him to fulfill the promise they had made six years before. 

Such a thought only made the pain in her chest to worsen, as if someone had wrapped a length of barbed wire around her heart and tightened it with every passing moment. It was then that, for the first time in her life, that the Truth made itself known to Erika Furudo. It was a moment of painful brilliance, like staring at the sun at noon, the seared her mind and brought a torrent of tears to eyes. For upon realizing what she had missed for all these years, the young detective broke down, fell to the floor on her knees before the gold, and began to sob. 

“You must not accept the headship!” she yelled. It was not a request, but rather a command she uttered at the top of her lungs. “You have far more important things to do!”

Battler walked forward without so much as a sound, and approached Erika, who looked like a puppy who had been denied her favorite toy. He then crouched low, and used his left hand to gently muss the small girl's hair. It was then he finally spoke, more serious then normal, and wiped her face free of tears with his other hand. “Well yeah, why would I ever want to do something like that? I've got my whole life ahead of me, and the last thing I'd want to do is live it on this island away from the real world. So don't worry, I'm not going anywhere.”

It was then that Erika's eyes stopped leaking tears, though her face was still stained by their presence, and began to sniffle. For the first time in her life, the youthful detective had known love.  
***  
By his partner's instruction, Battler had returned to the manor and rounded up the older members of the family with the promise that Erika had managed to not only solve the Epitaph, but also found where Kinzo had long ago stashed the ten tons of gold that formed the basis of his magnificent fortune. At first even his own mother had laughed off the news. After all, what was Erika, possibly be capable of that seven grown men and women, some of whom were leaders in their respective fields, couldn't? 

Such disbelief brought an aura of laughter and smiles to group as they walked through the still Rokkenjima night and towards the secret room where Erika and the gold awaited them. 

“I can't believe I never noticed this before.” Kyrie said to Battler, who walked beside his mother in a hush. “So tell me, how did you two solve the riddle?”

Battler laughed as the eight of them descended into the depths of the earth, and towards the place where Erika now stood, a smile on her face, and thoughts of showing that she was a true detective danced in her head. “It would take me an entire day just to explain it all, and besides I wasn't the one who solved it. That was all Erika.”

“Seriously?” the older woman said as she and her siblings arrived at the door that led to the gold's chamber. “The servant girl? You've got to be kidding me.”

“Just wait till you see whats behind that door, that'll explain everything.”

And as they laughed and chatted amongst themselves, mostly about how full of herself Erika was, the seven of them soon found themselves in the presence of a sight that shattered any and all doubt that still clung to their hearts and mind, leaving the group, save for Battler, in stunned silence. For before them Erika stood in front of the gold, her arms held aloft to her sides, and a wicked look on her face that just screamed “yes, you were all wrong for doubting me. Now choke on your words and die!”

“See, told you so.” Battler quipped.

“So you did, Battler.” Kyire said in a monotone. 

“Hello everyone!” Erika said loudly. “And welcome, for I've solved the Epitaph and found the gold that you all couldn't. You may now fall to your knees and praise me, and even if you don't, I will always have the satisfaction of having beaten each and everyone of you that doubted me to the punch. And even though I want nothing to do with with being the head or this stupid gold, just remember, it was me, Erika Furudo, the great detective, that solved this mystery once and for all!”

Battler clapped, and a few of the younger members of the family joined in as well. It was a display worthy of the novels that Erika had devoured in her youth, in which detectives would gather all those involved in a case and explain in excruciating detail just how they had solved a case. But there was no need for an explanation here, no grand scheme of whodunit or why, for the gold itself spoke volumes far greater then its ten ton mass would suggest. And what it said came across loud and clear, Erika Furudo was undoubtedly a detective.

“I see that you are to stunned to speak,” Erika said. “But I'm afraid my job here is done, you can all squabble amongst yourselves about who will become the head and take over this wretched family when the old man is dead without me. Now come on Battler, I'm a little sleepy and would like to speak in just the two of us before I go to sleep.”

“As you wish,” he laughed.” “Miss detective.”

Erika blushed again before dashing off out of the gold's hiding place with great haste. Her destination was the stuffy and poorly lit room where she had spent nearly every night of her life for the past decade or so, but, this night, for once she would not dream of a better life or leaving this place once and for all. For as far as she was concerned, those dreams would soon be a reality. 

With such speed she moved, she was half way to her room before she had noticed that Battler himself had not followed her. In the midst of the darkness she looked around in a panic, her eyes and ears searching for any trace of his tall frame in the dead of the night. But after a minute of searching, it soon became apparent that her near perfect senses had failed her. Which could mean only once thing, her most beloved of partners had not been allowed to leave the opulent chamber.

“What are they doing to you down there?” she wondered to herself in disgust. 

Back in the chamber of gold and the linger resent of an age past, Battler had found himself swarmed by not only his own parents, but those of each and everyone of his cousins as well. Like sharks descending upon a single solitary fish, the swarm of flesh and long standing ambitions gnashed within itself as each and every elder member of the Ushiromiya family argued for their stake in the fortune that now lay before them.

“Well, Battler did help to solve the Epitaph.” Kyrie said. “So its only logical that he should be the next head.”

Kyrie Ushiromiya was a woman who was best described as to intelligent for her own good. In her youth she had used her good looks and intellect to scheme her way through life, and even now, retained a look in her eye of vast intellect and cunning that struck fear into even the rest of her family. 

I'm still the first in line to become the head of this family!” Krauss yelled. “Doesn't that mean anything?” 

“Right!” Natsuhi added. “We shouldn't let some silly riddle decide the future of the entire family.”

Eva nodded in agreement. “Agreed. Even if Krauss is a fool, we should decide this like civilized people, and not rely on some arcane riddle to do so for us, even if father did write it himself.”

Kruass would have yelled in protest, but there was to much at stake at the moment, so he swallowed his pride and his words like the bitter pill they were.

“Now come on, we all very well know that this isn't about the headship.” Kyrie retorted. “Each of us, that includes my husband, has need for a great sum of money as soon as humanly possible. And nothing from what the old man said or the Epitaph said anything about what we did with the gold once we found it, so why not let my boy have the position of head and split the gold four ways? We each get what we want and we'll never have to talk about the matter again. That sounds like a perfectly good way of settling this, if you ask me.”

“I'm all for it.” Rudolph added. “Battler is a strong man, just like our father was when he was younger. I can't think of anyone better to lead this family in the future.”

“As long as I get my money...I really don't care who the head is.” Rosa finally spoke up. Normally the quietest of the four siblings, she was the one most often trampled upon by the others who were stronger in will and spirit then the soft spoken youngest member of the elder siblings.

“See? Rosa agrees with me, now all that is left is the two of you, Eva and Krauss.” Kyrie continued. 

Both of them had stake in their own child inheriting their father's ring, both for the sake of prestige and power. And thus had every reason to fight against Kyrie's plot with all of their might.

“My George deserves to inherit this family just as much as your son, Kyrie!” Eva nearly yelled. “What makes him so special anyway?”

“Well, he did find the gold.” Kyrie smiled devilishly. “And by your father's decree, that makes him the next in line to become the head of this family.”

Despite how strong the fire in her belly burned, and her blood boiled, Eva could not argue with such logic. “But what does Battler think?” she finally responded after nearly half a minute of silence. “Does he really want to take over father's position when he finally dies?” 

All eyes turned towards the youth that had stood silently amongst them as they bickered and fought over matters of power and money. He did not move, nor even speak. For he had wanted nothing to do with any of this. Not only for the sake of living his own life, but also for that of a single promise he had made not so long ago. “I don't know,” he said with a heavy and tiered sigh. “Its late and I can't make life altering decisions like this without a good night's rest. Ihihihihi...” 

Battler's laugh was labored and ended with deep yawn, rather then his usual jovial tone. 

“Then lets break for now,” Kyrie said with a yawn of her own. “We'll come up with something in the morning and then tell Kinzo what we've decided. Agreed?”

A round of nods went across the room. “Fair enough,” Eva and Krauss both said in unison.

“Then that's it, everyone have a good night and we'll meet here again in the morning.”

Upon being freed of the crowd around him, Battler quickly left with a very specific destination in mind. “Where are you going?” his adopted mother asked.

“I'm going to see Erika, where else?” he said.

***

Erika waited impatiently in her room and grumbled to herself more and more with each passing moment. Many times over she had stared angrily at the alarm clock resting on her desk, and several times even threatened it with bodily harm if the passage of time didn't bend to her will like so many mysteries had in the past. But in the end, no amount of yelling, threats, or squinting very hard in an effort to warp reality with her mind would bring Battler back to her, that was something that only he alone could accomplish.

And so Erika sighed as she sat alone on her oversized bed, for she was a girl who had always done things for her own sake and relied upon no one else save for the kind souls who had given her shelter, clothing, and food when she had no where else to turn. It was by her own hand, she often swore in her early days on the island, that she'd make something of herself. But in the past few days, even she had come to realize the Truth. For, as a certain Witch often said, the minimum number of people needed to create a universe was two, and without Battler, her own little world would never be complete.

“Where is that idiot?” Erika thought aloud to herself. “He's late.”

Outside, Battler had ran as fast as his long legs and weary lungs would carry him. He had to get away from his family, if just for awhile. All this talk of the headship and gold? It was something he simply didn't want to be a part of. He was eighteen for crying out loud! What kind of fool made decisions that would alter their future forever at eighteen? Battler was not that sort of fool, but rather his own idiotic transgressions lived firmly in the realm of promising a certain girl the rights to his mortal soul and a one way ticket from Rokkenjima. 

But these both were foolish decisions that he could live with. Such was a though that rang loudly in his head when he finally arrived at Erika's door, short of breath and panting like a dog at the height of a summer afternoon. “Yo,” he huffed. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Erika found her way to the door and let Battler in with great haste...only to smack him on the back with the broadside of one of her tiny hands. “What the heck were you doing back there?! I've been sitting here for nearly an hour.”

Battler reeled from the blow before standing to his full height once more, taking a moment to catch his breath, he then laughed be answering. “Kyrie seems hellbent on me being the next head, so all the adults got into a huge argument and long story short, they only broke it off after she managed to talk everyone into discussing it in the morning.”

Erika's eyes went wide, despite their promise it seemed that the rest of the family had other plans for the wild redhead. “You turned them down, right?” she said.

“I would have, if any of them had let me get a word in edgewise. I guess we'll just have to wait till tomorrow to tell them that as soon as this meeting is over the two of us are out of here for good.” 

A childish dream they had once shared had paved a way to a future built upon truth and trust, mystery and the prospect of a wider world. It was something that Erika had realized only hours before, but already the Truth had come to stain her view of the world for the better. She could see no longer future for herself here anymore, she was a detective now and had proven herself many times over by finding solving the island's greatest mystery. It was time to move on, and with her pack mule/partner at her side, she would show the whole world just how far her reasoning could take her! But none of that could become a reality as long as they both were here and the question of the headship remained. But that would be resolved in the morning, and then she would be free, now and forever.

“Get over here.” she demanded, and Battler complied, sitting down on the bed beside Erika. 

“You got something planed? Ihihihi.”

“I do,” Erika said. “Now just lay down and close your eyes until I say you can open them.”

“Oh,” he said cheerfully. “This sounds exciting.”

Though Battler could not see it, Erika sat up and strode across the room to her desk. After rummaging through the drawers for a moment, she withdrew a small object and returned to the bed. She crawled on top of the old bed and with a great sound like rubber ripping unfurled the small object she had rescued from the dusty depths of her desk. First applying it to Battler's legs, and then his arms, her smile shone like the moon beams filtering through the small window above them.

Upon finishing her work, the young detective snapped with her left hand, an attempt to gain the attention of her partner in all of this. “You can open your eyes now.” she said. 

Battler did so, and saw Erika hovering over him holding something in her left hand. He then tried to move, but found his egress stalled by an unknown force. In a near panic he looked around, first at Erika, who offered only a snicker at his expression, then at his own body. Even in the poor lighting of Erika's room, he would know the reflective surface he saw. He had been bound to the bed's four posts with Erika's most beloved of tools: duct tape.

“That's a nice joke, Erika.” he laughed awkwardly. “But could you please let me go now?”

“Not on your life, Battler.” she said on a contrary voice. “I don't trust your family right now and can't have you wandering off somewhere and falling into someones trap. So until the night is over, you'll be laying right there and won't move an inch or I'll kill you.”

“That's pretty hard to argue with.” he pulled way a bit, only for the tape to stop his attempt dead in its tracks. “But why do you think anyone here would try anything?”

“Just as I had planned it to be.” she said. “When there is this much money and power involved in a situation, it is only natural that a crime could happen at any time! Any good detective knows that.”

And even Battler knew that Erika certainly, by now, was a very good detective.

“Now, if you'll excuse me. I'll be returning to the manor to check a few things out. And don't you even think of trying to sneak out, because I've put a duct tape seal on every possible exit in the room, even the window, and will do the same to the door when I leave. So I will know if you tried.”

“You've really thought this through, haven't you?” Battler said as he struggled one more time before finally resigning himself to bounded fate.

“Of course!” she trumpeted, and then bent low on all fours, hovering over Battler like an owl might its prey. She then, and for the first time, planted a small but lingering kiss on Battler's cheek. “But for now I have to go. I'll be back in a few hours, so wait for me. I promise I'll come back alive.”

Such a statement was surely made in jest, but a part of Battler knew that, given the current situation, now was not the time to be joking about these sort of things. “I'll be holding you to that.” he said.

“Of course.” she said, and then crawled from the bed and left the room, sealing the door behind her as she went.  
***  
In the cold of a chilly October night, the moon lay hidden beneath the gathering clouds of a storm that would soon turn the island of Rokkenjima into a closed circle, the sort of setting so abused for the sake of drama in detective stories from the past half a century Erika skipped through the still night with a gleeful expression on her face. Despite the air of deceit and possible crime in the air. it was the sort of night that she had always dreamed would come to pass in her life time, but never thought actually would. A rich family, ten tons of gold, a feud over succession and inheritance, on their own each of these elements would make for drama worthy of a soap opera, but when combined would all make for the perfect mystery...but for that to happen, first someone would have to die.

Or at least that was what Erika's Detective Intuition told her. 

“I can smell the blood in the air already!” Erika exclaimed to no one in particular.

But upon stopping for a moment to sniff the air for herself, her stomach soon rebelled against her sense of self-control and sent forth a wave of bile she quickly contained with a swift bit of thinking. The smell in the air was vile, like a ton of iron had suddenly gone to rust somewhere on the island. For the air did actually smell of blood, though a normal person might not have noticed the change on the breeze, Erika, with her perfect sense of smell, was sickened to the point of nausea by the stench.

Clutching her stomach in one hand, she wiped a bit of bile from her lips and glanced towards the manor. The bloody mess of a smell had been coming from the general direction of the Ushiromiya family's ancestral home, and unless the servants had decided to butcher a cow whole in the middle of the night, something most foul had just occurred within the buildings dark and foreboding walls.

Her nausea could wait, as Erika quickly dashed through her discomfort and towards the home she had wished so many times over would burn down in a conflagration of the worst possible sort. Her target, she thought as she approached the rose garden that dominated the mansion's entry way, was the various bedrooms that the family's elder siblings slept when visiting the island, as it would be far easier to kill someone in their sleep when they could not struggle, after all. Even an idiot knew that.

The front doors were not locked, they rarely were. But the air of the situation was still an odd one. As if a sense of dread hung upon the very air issuing forth from the noble structure. Erika entered the building slowly on the tips of her toes, sneaking forth as to make as little noise as humanly possible. As she crept about, a sense of dread clung to even her hardened heart. She had many times over encountered this sort of situation in fiction, and made short work of it with her carefully sharpened wit and wisdom, but to encounter it in real life was another story entirely. 

As she wandered further into the unlit structures' innards, her heart began to beat at triple its normal speed. It was strange to think, but the young detective...was actually excited. “I wonder if there are any bodies lying around...?” she thought to herself. 

She did ever so want to see a real murder scene in real life just once. If just to be able to shout about the cause and time of death and make deduction after deduction until she could assemble everyone involved into a single room, raise her finger against one of them, and shout “You are the culprit!” at the top of her lungs. It was a thought that brought a snicker to Erika's lips as she found her way to the second floor, still on her tip toes, where the bedrooms of the siblings awaited her.

It was here the awful smell from outside was worst, most likely flowing forth from an open window or similar portal. And again Erika felt her stomach double over, sending its contents places it really shouldn't go. But now was no time to be sick! Murder was afoot...maybe.

The first room on the right was that belonging to Eva and Hideyoshi. Erika approached with a bold heart, for this was a moment she had waited her entire life for. With a quivering hand, she carefully turned the door's knob, and quickly found it was not locked. “Damn.” she thought. “I was really hoping this would be a closed room case.”

But regardless of the status of the room, the door opened anyway, revealing inside a dark quarter filled with the same stench that had come to dominate the area outside. Unable to see, Erika flicked on the a light switch near the door after groping in the darkness for a moment, and nearly jumped upon seeing the corpose of the jovial man she had seen just hour before fallen upon the floor and covered in a thick glaze of red.

“A body!” she screamed in near delight.

She didn't need to confirm the man's death, for whomever had carried out the murder had done her the favor of making his death incredibly obvious. Upon closer inspection, bullet holes riddled Hideyoshi's face in the spread fashion of the blast of a shotgun. There was no mystery to be solved here, only a case of slaughter, pure and simple. But the fact remained, who had carried out the crime?

“Eva was gone...” Erika thought as she turned over the fat man's body looking for any other signs of a struggle. “So that makes her a likely suspect, but what motivation would she have to kill her own husband? They'd never fought over money as far as I'd seen, and didn't have any family issues to speak of. Most likely,” she said to herself. “Eva was out going to the bathroom or getting something to eat when the murder occurred!”

Erika nodded triumphantly, that had to be it. 

Later the police would come, and confirm what Erika already knew, or at least she thought they would. For how could she ever possibly be wrong? But until dawn broke and safety of daylight returned against alongside the seagulls that bleated and cried like aquatic felines every morning, she would first have to catch whoever had feed Hideyoshi a heaping portion of lead. 

So the young detective left the bedroom, and bloody corpse, behind and flicked off the lights on her way out and shut the door behind her, an effort to make it appear as if the room had not been disturbed at all. Once back in the dark hall, Erika once more stood on the tips of her toes and crept like a thief through the unlit darkness. Down the hall she went, her every step echoing ever so quietly through the hall as she went. In her head she cackled gleefully. “This is a full on murder mystery!” she thought. “And If I can solve it I'll be famous and everyone will know my name.”

She hadn't, even for a second thought that she could be killed herself, but she was the detective after all and nothing bad ever happens to them in a mystery story. But what Erika didn't realize as she came upon a second bedroom that reeked of death and a smell much like rusting iron, was that this was not a mystery. For a mystery required a heart, some reason for the crime. But here? There was naught but opportunity, and the golden allure of more money then a person could possibly spend in a life time.

In the second room she found Rosa, Maria's mother and struggling fashion designer, face up her bed with wounds similar to those dotting Hideyoshi's corpse covering her body. Upon closer inspection, Erika could feel that the body was still warm, and that the killer had carelessly left several shell casings on the ground. These red tubes were the remnants of the blast that had taken Rosa's life, and confirmed for the young detective the murder weapon in full. “Hmm,” she pondered as she looked over the empty casing. “Whoever killed Rosa and Hideyoshi would have to had access to a large caliber shotgun after they arrived at the island. This wasn't a carefully planned crime, and it may have actually been something the culprit cooked up on the spot. But still...” she stroked her chin. “Where on the island could a person find something like that?” 

Long ago she had heard that Kinzo had kept several guns manufactured by the Winchester corporation in his personal study, and had even heard him firing for fun one sunny afternoon many years ago. Thus, in her head, it was most likely that the murder had stolen the guns from the elderly head of the Ushiromiya family...or that the murderer was Kinzo himself.

“But that's stupid!” Erika cried as she surveyed Rosa's body once more, taking careful note of where she had been shot and the distance from her that the shotgun's shell casings had fallen afterward. “The old man might not thought that some of his kids were ungrateful, money grubbing, parasites. But he wouldn't have a reason to kill them. If anything, he'd try to live as long as he could, simply to spite the four of them and prevent his money from going to them for years to come.”

Erika giggled to herself despite her hands being covered in blood, by her own deduction she had managed to push aside both Kinzo and Eva as being the culprit. Which, as of this most recent death, left Krauss, Natsuhi, Kyrie, and Rudolph as possible suspects, the cousins could also have been involved, but due to Maria's age, Battler currently be duct taped to her bed, and Jessica and George being a world away in the guest house, Erika quickly dismissed the thought as ridiculous. 

All of them had a motive of sorts. Krauss was the present heir to the family fortune, and with the rest of his siblings out of the picture, there would be no fighting over inheritance and all of the money, the island, and the gold would all go to his own family. Natsuhi would support her husband through anything, Erika thought, even murder. This would make the two of them the logical suspects for these grisly murders. But until she could confirm the death of the latter two of members of the family, she couldn't be sure of anything.

Leaving Rosa's still warm body behind, Erika resumed her search and soon stumbled upon the tell tale smell of murder once more. This time, in a room decorated in the finest manner the family could afford, she found the bodies of both Krauss and Natsuhi sprawled upon the ground and thrown into a heap like so much burnable trash. From the look on both of their faces, one of wide eyes and open mouths, it was very likely they had actually woken up before the culprit had managed to lodge a bullet between their eyes. Much like the prior murders, each body was riddled with bullet holes in a haphazard manner. “The culprit didn't care how they killed these people.” Erika reasoned as she examined the bodies, finding that each was in much the same state as those of the rest of the Ushiromiya family siblings. “Only that they were actually dead.”

For years Erika had thrilled to the thought of solving complex closed room cases in which interesting tricks were used to make it appear as if the victim had offed themselves, or even that a witch had carried out the bloody mess by means of magic. But she sighed over the corpses of Natushi and Krauss and looked forlornly out the window into the still night. She had wanted to use a few tricks of her own, to use a duct tape seal to make sure she could tell who left or entered a room, and to gather all of the surviving members of the family for one grand round of whodunit. But she would be able to do neither, for there she had no time to make such a seal, and knowing if the killer had entered the room meant little when they themselves care so very little anything besides making sure their targets were dead.

But with the death of the family heir and his wife, tshe could now at least confirm, with very little room for error, just who had killed the siblings. But before she could loft her finger in triumph, she would first have to confirm the status of a certain person.

“Battler!” Erika yelled in realization. “I have to make sure he is OK, because if he dies who will carry my things...?”

It was rare for Erika to truly care about anyone besides herself, but Battler was a special case. He had been at her side for years, and even in the six year gap between the last family conference and now, had wrote her letter after letter detailing in excruciating depth every facet of his life. He was special. He was the one whom she cared about most. And while the rest of the family could rot in hell for all she cared, she needed Battler. To carry her things. To talk mysteries until the early hour of the morning. And, though she would never admit it aloud, to occasionally pat her on the head and say that everything would be all right.

And so she went, still on her tip toes but now at a much faster pace, through the manor and made for the front doors. But as she arrived downstairs, and found herself in the family dining room, the sound of footsteps echoed behind her. With her excellent hearing, Erika could discern that each footstep was light and carried little weight behind the impact between foot and floor. As each of the Ushiromiya family men were either well built or dead, it had to be a woman. And with how little effort the person behind the footsteps was making to stifle the sound of their advance, it was very likely they also were incredibly confident in their ability to move about the manor freely without worry of detection or resistance.

Indeed, there was only one person who could be following her. And so Erika held her finger aloft, as she had waited years to do, postured herself in as confident a stance as she could, and shouted into the darkness. “You are the culprit, Kyrie Ushiromiya!” she yelled.

From the darkness, the sound of someone clapping echoed through the wide room, and thus emerged Kyrie Ushiromiya, her elegant suit covered in splatters of blood and bile and with a large Winchester shotgun held firmly in one of her hands. 

“You caught me.” Kyrie laughed as she rounded the long table and neared Erika, who stood shivering in just a light hint of fear. “But I never thought, of all the people who'd catch on, that'd be Battler's annoying little girlfriend. You know, I really thought all of your yelling about being a detective was just a bunch of delusional posturing. But here were are, you've found me out, and that means I'll have to kill you now. Sure, Battler will be sad. But I honestly could care less what Asumu's damn kid thinks about all of this.”

Erika found herself cornered, for between the table and Kyire's effective range, it was unlikely she could escape without succumbing to the same fate as those who's bodies littered the second floor. So, instead, she stood her ground, as any good detective would.

“But why?” Erika shivered. “Why did you do it?”

Erika very well knew the answer, but if there was any chance she was going to die. She was going to die a detective.  
Kyrie rolled her eyes. “Money, what else? With those idiots out of the way, I can just take everything for myself. But you likely already figured that out, didn't you, Ms. Detective?” she mocked Erika with her every word. There was no respect for the youths intellect, nor compassion for the dead. What had occurred that night was nothing more then a crime of opportunity spurred on by greed. 

Erika shook her head in the positive and smiled. “Of course I did, my power of deduction is second to none. But why don't you tell me how you did it first? I'm not going anywhere.”

Kyrie laughed again. “Is that really your last request, then fine.” the elder of the two women cocked her gun and held it firmly against Erika's head. “You know, it was easy! After everyone's little talk about the gold, I got to thinking. “Wouldn't it be easier if these idiots were all dead?” Of course it would, so after everyone split up I headed to Kinzo's study to tell him the good news about the gold. From there it was only a matter of asking to see one of these guns and then, when he wasn't looking, shooting the old man in the back of the head. Naturally this meant that head servant had to die to, but that was fine, I didn't care much for him anyway. From there...well you saw the rest, didn't you?”

Sweat dripped from Erika's brow at a greater speed then it had at any other time in her life. Despite her calm facade, her knees shivered as if it were ten below zero in the dining room. For this was the end, she thought. After nearly twenty years of living, and being so very close to claiming the freedom she so duly craved for all those years with her own hand, she was going to die. And at the hands of the adoptive mother of her most beloved person no less. So, swallowing heavily both any spit in her mouth and any fear in her heart, Erika smiled wide and proud. Reaffirming to herself once more, that if she was going to die, she was going to die a detective!

“Well then, since I don't think we've ever properly been really got to know each other let me say one last thing.” she took one more deep breath, this was it. And she had to make it count. “Let me introduce myself...” she said in a proud voice. “My name is Erika Furudo, the detective!”

And a gunshot rang through the darkness.


	4. The Deteciive Falls In Love: Tea Party

A gunshot rang out in the darkness, but it found home not in the forehead of the detective for which it was intended. Instead the shot had gone horribly awry, launching nearly straight up into the air and impacting the ceiling, leaving a hole in the overhang that sent shards of wood tumbling towards the floor where they lay at Kyrie Ushiromiya's blood soaked feet. 

Erika had expected to die and quivered in place, her eyes wide open, and awaited the end with her arms outstretched and look of contempt on her face that could have made a demon wish for her demise. In that stance she had waited with baited breath for the end. But it never came. Rather the bullet meant for her skull had found home in the ceiling above their heads, leaving its owner with a look on her face that combined elements of shock and utter confusion.

“Is that the best you can do?” Erika asked in a quiver.

But Kyrie did not answer, nor did she offer up a second bullet for Erika's impudence. Instead, with a loud crashing noise that suggested something blunt cracking against a hard surface, her eyes merely rolled into the back of her head in a deathly manner that could send a shiver down the soul of most sane souls, but only made Erika breath a sigh of relief. The elder Ushiromiya then fell backwards and landed upon the floor with a loud THUD. Her body bounced just a bit, then settled on the ground unceremoniously. Looking much like the dead bodies Erika had seen earlier in the night, it was a fitting end for one who had made such company with death itself. But the question remained, just what had happened in the time between the time her mind had resigned itself to death and the present moment.

That answer came quickly, as a voiced echoed from the darkness that lie just behind Kyrie's unconscious form. 

“Ihihihi, sorry to keep you waiting.” 

When Erika's eyes and mind adjusted to a normal state of being, she saw standing in front of her Battler. Looking as chipper as ever despite the smell of blood and bullets in the air, he held in his right hand what appeared to be a coat rack that he had slung over his shoulder and apparently used to beat his own mother into submission, while his pure white suit had been stained a light red in places. On his wrists was the remains of several pieces of duct tape that were accompanied by a horrid red glow that was painful even to look at.

“How...how in the name of all that is good did you get here?” Erika stumbled upon her words as she attempted to piece together the parts of her mind that had been shattered upon having a gun pointed at her head. 

True enough, there were few detectives, amateur or otherwise, with as much skill with a roll of duct tape as Erika, and she had made every precaution to make sure Battler would never rise from that bed without her aid. She had triple wrapped each of his limbs in place, and even made sure apply each layer in just such a way that they as well have been actual hand cuffs. Yet here Battler was, standing in front of her, his mother laying unconscious on the ground, and grinning like a fool. It was a scene to silly to for even a detective novel, but somewhere along the line, had become just the sort of thing she'd come to expect of the youth known as Battler Ushiromiya.

So she rolled her eyes. Really that was all she could think to do in a situation like this.

“Well, you did tape me to that bed pretty good.” Battler joked. “But I couldn't just leave you alone like that! I'm your partner after all, and if something happened to you while I was taped up like that I don't really know what I'd do! So after I summoned up all my strength to free myself, I ended up asking myself “If I was was Erika, what would I do in a situation like this?” 

“And that is what exactly?” Erika asked still shaking a bit from her brush with death.

“Easy! You're the type to take charge of a situation and zero in on the culprit using any and all information you could get your hands on. So once I had a chance to look around and found all of those dead bodies, it wasn't all that hard to figure out that you'd been in those rooms before me. I know you can't resist a case as good as this one. So from there I just followed the trail, picked up something to defend myself with, and when I heard you and big sis Kyrie talking down here, I ran as quickly as I could. It hurt having to do that to her... but I couldn't just let you die.”

Erika's body was on its last legs, her head swimming and her knees weak, she could barely stand as Battler recounted his tale. Even her face wore a look of absolute fatigue and was twisted into a look that only one who had just moments ago been at hell's gate could possibly have. “Battler...” she stammered. “I will only say this once, and you must never repeat it to anyone else, am I clear?”

“'Course, what do you need?”

“I don't know how much longer I'll be able to stand or talk so please... first do something about your mother and then pick me up.”

There was no need for further words, as Battler took the very same duct tape roll that Erika had used to bind him and tapped together Kyrie's hands and then her feet, taking special care to use just enough to ensure that she would never be able to escape the bonds of her own volition. And then he strode over to where Erika stood light headed and breathing heavily, and scooped up the tiny detective in a bridal carry. 

“This isn't what I meant!” Erika protested with a small flailing of her arms.

“You're not exactly in a position to protest.” Battler laughed, his words just a bit distant in light of the events of the family conference. “But come on, lets go.”

“Go where?” Erika blinked.

“To call the police, what else would you do in a situation like this?”

Erika sleepily nodded. Though the body account of the weekend's massacre now likely numbered thirteen strong, the nightmare was finally over and she could leave the rest to her partner. The reliable, goofy, someone hardheaded boy whom she had been obsessed with over a decade. Those thought swirling in her head, Erika finally fell asleep in Battler's arms. 

 

***

In all, when the sun rose the next morning the police had found five people had survived what would later become known in journalistic circles as the Rokkenjima Massacre. 

-Erika and Battler were found in the dining room, having slept back to back in a rotation to make sure Kyrie didn't try anything stupid. 

-Ruldolf Ushiromiya's unconscious and bloody body had been found in the guest house containing the servants and cousins' rooms. Though not dead, further investigation would later show that he had hit his head in a struggle against one of the elder cousins that had also seemingly caused his gun to go off and kill another poor soul in the process. 

-Finally, one Eva Ushiromiya was found to have wandered via a hidden path from the manor to the hidden manor located in Rokkenjima's dark woods. No one was really sure how she had managed to get there, but she had nonetheless and missed the entirety of the massacre in the process.

-Everyone else on the weekend had died, victims of unchecked greed and lust all.

And so the seagulls signaled the new days as they always did, but that morning they seemed to sing a dirge. One for all the poor souls that had lost their lives, as well as for those who would live on with the burden of death upon their souls for the rest of their days. But live on they must, for all of their sakes.


	5. The Deteciive Falls In Love: ???

In a dark hovel of a building where the windows were cracked just pinch even in the middle of the day, and the sun's rays peered through the slitted blinds in such a way as to lend the whole scene an air of mystery that a phone rung on and on with great urgency. From the other side of the room a tall young man looked across the desk at which he sat at a short woman with long blue hair stood beside one of the half cracked windows with a serious look on her face.

“Should I answer it?” he asked. “It might be just be another telemarketer.” 

“Of course!” The woman turned and yelled. “It's been nearly two weeks since our last case, and rent is due on the first of the month. We need anything we can get at this point.”

The young man only laughed and then picked up the phone with a smile.

“Hello, you've reached the Furudo Detective Agency, how can I help you?” 

“Hell, it seems that I've lost my precious cat Bernkastel and I was hoping that your agency could help me find her.”

“Hold on, I have to ask the detective herself if we deal with animals.”

So he did, covering one end of the cordless phone with his hand to muffle his next statement and turned towards the same woman at the window once more, this time yelling at test just how serious her threat had been. “Hey, Erika, do we take lost animals cases/? I know you were all keen on solving murders and bank robberies but...”

“Yes.” she said in dejection. “We'll take any case we can get. I'll never be able to get to a big case like that if we can't even pay the rent!”

“You know,” Battler said. “We could always ask Aunt Eva for some money. She had more then she knows what to do with.”

“NEVER!” Erika slammed her hand against the wooden wall beside her, causing its ancient finish to creak and crack from ages of deterioration and rot. “I will never ask that old hag for anything. We are taking this case and that is final!”

Battler then laughed his trademark laugh and removed his hand from the end of the office phone. “The boss says we'll take your case. Now if you'll just leave your name, number, and a time we can reach you to set up a consultation, we'll get to workk finding that kitty of yours.”

“Well, my name is Ikuko and I'll be busy most of the week, but I should be free this coming Friday. You can reach me at...”

“Great, great. See you then Miss Ikuko.”

Hanging up the phone, Battler turned to his boss and girlfriend of nearly five years and spoke happily. “Well, we've got a case, how does it feel to be back in the detective game again?”

Erika, still short as ever, rolled her eyes. “Just great.” she said sarcastically. “Just great.”


End file.
